Learning to drive

When I first met your Dad, I wasn't even driving yet. I was getting close but still not old enough, I probably had my permit.  My parents (mostly my Dad) helped me learn to drive but I still needed a lot of practice as I was learning to drive on a manual transmission versus an automatic. Your Dad was my "18 years old or older licensed driver" so that I could provide the car and my permit.  Between the both of us,  this got us everywhere. Your Dad helped me become the good driver that I am today. He would often get a ride out to the house and then we'd head somewhere. Sometimes it was to the movies both in the town we later lived in B and D. We'd often go out to eat.

Our first trip to Duluth

I don't exactly remember when it was but we went to Duluth for the weekend when we were still pretty young. I was working at the video store and I think I must have had to work Friday. When I look back, I laugh because we hadn't planned it very well. We left when I got off work which would have been around 9 or 10 pm and drove up. I expect we believed that we could check into a motel when we got there but we didn't realize how popular Duluth was in the summer on the weekends. There were no rooms available for Friday or Saturday night. I think I remember the plan being that one night in a motel and the next couple of nights camping up in the state parks up along the North Shore. When we got to Duluth on Friday and didn't have a place to check in, we decided that we would just sleep in the car in the parking lot of a 24 hour grocery store. I remember waking up early and going down to Canal Park. It was really fun to have our first weekend get away even if we had slept in the car. We spent the day in Duluth and then decided to drive along the north shore with a stop at Gooseberry Falls on our way to camp at the state parks. There's two there and the first one was full so we kept driving and the second one was full too. Thankfully, we found some sort of tourist kiosk or some such thing and found another campground that wasn't on the north shore but further inland. I remember we set up the tent and went to take showers and I think we also paid for a sauna and maybe a pizza. I remember waking up with a really bad headache in the middle of the night. We drove back to Duluth the next day (Sunday night) and found a cheap motel which I remember I got a kick out of it because they had a vibrating bed.