Great mini vacation

I know this is a few months old, but it was such a great trip I wanted to share it. I decided about a week before the 4th of July that I wanted to get out of town for a small town celebration. I decided that it would be fun to go to Southern MN and it turned out to be a great time. I was lucky to find a great deal on a really nice little "suite" in a town close to our destination 4th of July small town.
We drove down on a Sat. and had great weather. We stopped and had lunch at a state park since we couldn't check in until later that afternoon. (Picture: Kids looking at the river after eating lunch) After lunch we drove around the beautiful countryside (note: kids were pretty bored with this, but good sports because this trip was my birthday gift). We were in Amish country and we were looking for some Amish farms to visit. We checked into our great "suite", two bedrooms, full kitchen, living room for a great price. We decided to go find a goat farm that was advertised. They had a neat shop and goats the kids could pet. Of course I wanted to buy everything because it was all handmade. It is really rude to take pictures of the Amish, they don't believe in pictures, but they had a buggy display outside the visitor center (don't worry it didn't belong to anyone, just a display) that the kids posed in front of. After the goat store we drove around more looking for Amish farms. They have tours that you can take, but I was too cheap to pay for them. Then we saw a buggy going down the highway and I told Ryan to follow that buggy. He drove right past a farm that was selling goods. We stopped in and bought a basket, jam and cashew crunch. The kids had never been to an Amish farm, and watched the children there with interest. We had a nice chat with the woman that lived there about the weather and were on our way. Then we started just following horse poop and found another farm. The next farm we found we bought some gifts and the woman there was super nice. She asked if we had an audio tour, and we told her how we found her farm. She was so nice she drew us a map of the farms in the area. She also told us to go to a bakery just out of town that is great. The little girl that lived on that farm kept getting scolded by her mom in German for staring so much at our kids, she especially liked the way Shella May looked. We quickly drove to the bakery because it was going to close soon. We all got some great treats there and everyone was happy with our farm searching at that point.
We went back to our hotel, had some dinner and played card games. The next morning was the Fourth, so we went to town for the festivities. It was lightly raining, but it didn't spoil the fun. We ate some food, played some mini golf and got ready to watch the parade. It started really pouring rain when the parade started, but it still went on. It was Shella May's first parade and she thought it was great that people were throwing candy at her despite the rain. The parade was a lot of fun and just long enough. That night they had great fireworks in town. I couldn't believe how long the show went for such a small town. It was a long day, but we all had a great day despite the rain.
The next day we were taking off to go home. The kids (mostly Liam) had asked if we could go to a local cave. It was a little pricey for 5 people, but they had been such great sports all weekend that we decided to go before we left the area.
We got to the cave and it was a fun tour. It was a different kind of structure than the other caves we had been in. It was really long and narrow. It was Shella May's first time in a cave and she didn't like that it was cold. It was really interesting and we had a fun time. There is another cave down there and we will try to go to that one next time we go down for a visit. What a fun, inexpensive family trip we had.