Father's Day Trip to Minoqua

We spent a leisurely father's day in Minoqua, WI. It's an hour drive from our place and our first stop was at Paul Bunyan's Cook Shanty. When we saw the obnoxious sign we, of course, had to stop and try it out.

Paul Bunyan and his ox, Blue

(can't miss this sign!)

This restaurant is a "family style" restaurant. This means you pay before you're seated and they bring out three different meat plates, corn on the cob, smashed potatoes, stuffing, bread and drinks. I don't think we put much of a dent in the food. Kory had "chicken on the cob" (a drumstick), while Kyle enjoyed pot roast. The best part of this restaurant was the host. He had pants that defied gravity. The man was in some serious denial about needing a bigger waist size. Seriously, the only thing holding those pants up were some very tightly stretched suspenders. If one of those babies broke, well let's just say, we would have seen a little more than we bargained for!Look at this mess of food!

Sadly it was raining when we exited the restaurant so not sure what to do we just started driving. We came upon a Wildlife Park and decided to stop since the rain was letting up. Good choice, the rain completely stopped and we had a fun time.

The boys on our nature walk

Can you believe this buck is just sitting there letting the boys pet it. They were pumped!

There was a pen of dwarf rabbits and Kyle was able to grab hold of the tiniest one in the pen.

This is the fattest rabbit I have ever seen! This thing had to weigh 40 some pounds, it was huge!

This pot-bellied pig was a little hornory, but the baby goats loved to jump on her back and make her squeal. This too was one of the fattest pigs, I have seen.

There were goats every where and many warning signs like this..."Goats eat anything so please do not leave strollers, purses, bottles, cameras, hats and clothing unattended". One of the goats took a liking to Kyle and tried to nibble on his shirt as he walked around.

Jason and Kory petting another buck

This was the only fawn I could get up close, but there were quite a few running around.

There were so many more animals there like, tigers, zebras, peacocks, emus, bison, black bears and so on and so on. You get the idea. The boys had a blast and it was just so nice to be outside.

After the Wildlife Park we drove back into town and walked down main street. There were tons of little antique shops, a old-time candy store. We decided to stop for ice cream at an old soda fountain shop. It was such a neat place. They had it packed with arcade games, an indoor mini golf course, billard tables. Every kids dream. In the back of the shop was the soda fountain shop, which looked like a scene from the 50's. It was awesome and they had the best ice cream ever! I ignored my latose intolerance and pounded down a single scoop cookie-dough waffle cone. Well, my latose intolerance reminded me that it was still there and I could only eat half of it. After our ice cream we played some mini golf.

This was the boys' first time playing mini golf. They loved it and did really well actually. We are still not sure how Kory hit most of his balls into the cup, but he managed to get a 3 or 4 on just about every hole. Of course dad was the big winner with a score of one over par. But, it's mini golf, does it really count!

We then drove home, the boys slept most of the way. After arriving home, Kyle challenged Jason to a game of baseball on the PS2. Kyle was I'm sure thinking that he would beat his dad, but sadly he did not. I believe he lost 38 to 7. Ouch! After getting over being beat, they joined me upstairs and we all watched "X-Men, The Last Stand together". All in all I believe Jason had a wonderful Father's Day. It was just so nice to have a day with nothing on the schedule to do with what we pleased!