vakkotaur | Entries tagged with new ulm

Early Thursday afternoon jmaynard and I started out for Fargo, ND because, well, we had time, he had never been to North Dakota, and the weather while cold wasn't expected to be stormy. On the way we stopped at Burghardt in Watertown, SD for a while.

It was quite cold and we saw sundogs when we left Watertown. A while after sunset, for a brief time, we also saw moondogs before the sky cleared and they disappeared.

After checking into the hotel in Fargo we set out to find something for supper and decided to try "Grandma's Saloon" which was not far away. Jay surprised me when he ordered iced tea when the outdoor temperature was around 0 F. That North Dakota is not Minnesota was evident by the cajun dish I ordered actually being rather spicy.

I had no problems with getting caspian on the hotel's wireless network. The work to get Wolvix installed and WiFi Radar working paid off, so I'm rather pleased by that.

Friday morning we checked the weather and it was warmer, by a few degrees, in Fargo than it was in Fairmont. We made our return trip by way of St. Cloud where we stopped at a World Market and picked up a few things. We got to New Ulm around supper time and stopped in at the Kaiserhoff restaurant. I've decided I've had my one German meal there for the year now. It was good, but likely not all that good for me. Since it's still Winter (and very much so) we tried the Schell's SnowStorm which this year is "a sweet London style stout." We're not sure just how London style it is. Would it be better served merely cool rather than outright cold? Nearby we saw what had been a Ben Franklin store that was now a 'Zen Franklib' and stopped int to find out what that was about. Rearranged letters, to not use the original name, was all. That it was, or had started out as, a Ben Franklin store was still evident. Alas, so was an overpowering smell. I'm not sure what it was, but it was oppressive and we had to get out before we had trouble breathing. It was that bad.

The trip was generally uneventful as such trips ought to be. The RX-350's navigation system is very easy to get used to, and as usual XM 164 is a Good Thing on long trips.

Friday was the last "warm" day for a while, with the forecast not predicting anything above 0 F again until Tuesday. I suspect we won't be going anywhere for a while.

The Martin Luther College Renaissance Faire was today. My folks are visiting this weekend so they could attend this faire. When that was first suggested I was concerned they'd come a great distance for very little.

We got our start a bit early, which was good as I either misinterpreted the MLCRF web site's map or didn't make the same assumption. Following its highlighted route from Hwy 15 might work, but not from the Hwy 15, or the part of Hwy 15 (I'm not sure) we drove in on. I drove though New Ulm ("Sleepy Eye 11 miles") and turned around. The real directions from Hwy 15 from the south are: stay on Hwy 15. Turn right on 1 ST NORTH and go a block (or is two?) but then turn left when you see a city park. Find a place to park.

The parking is free. The admission is free. The event is put on by a group associated with the Martin Luther College, and it's rather Ars Gratia Artis. There were a few vendors. A couple jewelry vendors, a few leather goods vendors (which amazingly didn't overlap product - different specialties) and a kettle-corn vendor. There were also a couple food vendors but I got the impression they were part of the MLC group.

There was a stage which faced away from the rest of the event, which made drawing a crowd a bit tricky, but it was for good reason. The park has a terraced hillside there which makes an ideal place for an audience to sit. The weather was good, if a bit windy, so the ground was at worst slightly damp and cool. There were performances and contests scheduled throughout the day.

Before things got started, and they seemed to start a bit late or at least fuzzily, there was a sound system going. However, the audio was music that one might expect to hear (foolscap001 might quibble, but I've certainly heard worse) at a renfaire and it wasn't obnoxiously loud. And once things were nicely underway, the audio system was shut off or at least left dormant.

The food concessions, such as they were, were sort of out of the way and easy to miss. That resulted in our walking downtown a bit for lunch. As we were dressed for the occasion (MCLRF) we got a few looks and a couple questions. What food there was at MLCRF was good, but the event is a small one and thus the selection understandably limited.

The one performance group I've seen elsewhere was My Lady's Cutlass which put on one of the better shows, having had more experience than most folks there. At one vendor's booth I found that I'd encountered them before but not like this. It was their first time vending. I heard another describe MLCRF as a nice dry run to check thing out for the season before doing a bigger event.

Sales were slow (I gave one place their first sale of the day - and that was after the walk downtown for lunch) and things were pretty easygoing. My mother commented on how different the feel was from MNRF. It wasn't that MLCRF wasn't a permanent faire site, or was small, but that it wasn't a constant hard sell. MNRF is a walk in a mall. MLCRF is a walk in the park.

We left around 2 PM and so didn't stay until close at 6 PM. That 6 PM close isn't entirely accurate. While everything else ceases and the vendors start tearing down, at 6 PM is when the big event of the play (Taming of the Shrew being this year's play) begins.

I'm glad I went. It was a nice start to the faire season. While there wasn't much there, what was there was right, or at least not wrong. "Not wrong" might sound like faint praise, but after so many times of seeing folks not manage to get to "not wrong" this was nice.

Current Mood: relaxed

I got home, changed, and checking the time we decided that dining in New Ulm was workable. Another visit to the Kaiserhoff, and while I did try another of Schell's products, I didn't have anything just too heavy to eat as I opted for the special: salmon. That went well enough and we expected we might be just a couple minutes late.

Then we got to the Martin Luther College campus where while there some parked cars around, it seemed the only thing moving was us. We tried the doors to the building where the meetings are held and found them locked. Looking around, the only lights on in any buildings seemed to be for halls and stairways.

It seems we chose break at MLC without realizing it. The web site does not indicate this break, an entry for March being "Meetings every Thursday at 7:30PM in the WCC room # 266-268." Well, we had a good supper and we weren't late to any meeting.

Tonight jmaynard and I will be going to New Ulm to see the Martin Luther College Renaissance Festival folks at one of their weekly meetings. This time we'll be dressing for it, which means when I get home I get to change. This, as Jay pointed out this noon, takes a bit of time, which might well cause a sufficient delay that we would miss the start of things if we dined in New Ulm. And that means we'd likely be better off just doing something quick at home (hello Chef Magnetron) rather than dining at the Kaiserhoff or such again.

I hadn't thought that the changing would take all that much time, but it's quite possible. I've been looking forward to dining in New Ulm again and so doing something else is a bit of a disappointment. It does make sense, however, in a few ways. Doing something at home will be faster and less expensive both monetarily and in caloric load. As things will get late enough that I will not get my usual exercise in, the lower caloric load is a good thing. Dining in is what I should do. It makes sense. It just isn't what I really desire. Or perhaps it might be better to say that it's not what I'd been expecting, and that the deviation is the disappointment. Had I been planning on grabbing something quick all along, and not had Kaiserhoff or such on my mind, I probably wouldn't feel like I'm missing something.

And now, if plans are changed and we see if I can change quickly and get going I suspect I'd feel guilty about eating at someplace in New Ulm. It feels like a no-win situation. And it's all so unimportant, really. Either way, nothing actually bad happens.

I saw a notice for a new faire (Warning: The site is hosted on Tripod so don't expect it to work right and do expect it to be spammy) in New Ulm. I'm a bit concerned that this is the "Martin Luther College Renaissance Faire" and they need to use a Tripod web site.

It's scheduled for May 6 which seems a bit early in the year for the latitude. The price is right, though, as it's free parking and free admission. It appears to be a small one-day event without much in the way of detail yet. It'll be interesting to see what comes of it. Considering price and proximity (about an hour's drive, I think), I don't see a reason not to at least give it a look should it actually happen.