The Land of Salted Nut Rolls

I spent this past weekend on my first visit to Minnesota (beautiful fall weather, too!) to catch up with some really wonderful girlfriends - Julia, Sarah (when are you starting your blog, Sarah!), and Liz!

And then there were four

Minnesota, I learned, has an abundance of the best candy ever (I would say these rank right up there with Mini Eggs) - Salted Nut Rolls. Nougat, caramel and peanuts. And, this almost sounds like blasphemy but it is true - the plain kind are more tasty than the chocolate kind. Julia is the sweetest and has sent me care packages of Salted Nut Rolls before Ironman because I can't find them out East AND these have become my bento box treat on the bike. 

LOOK at them all!

Julia, Sarah, and I are all Tucson tri camp buddies from years past and we picked a great weekend for a reunion. The weather was great AND it was Kona race weekend, which meant we spent the majority of Saturday with the race playing on an iPad in the background while we tracked our friends racing and  steamrolled through packages of cheese, crackers, bagels, veggies, apple pie and, of course, Salted Nut Rolls. 

Pre-run group shot - with some fall foliage in the background!

We got a run in on Saturday morning, and Sarah and I managed to turn the 5 mile loop into 9 miles as we both got lost (not together and not in the same direction). Poor Julia had to drive around to find us, haha. During the Kona bike portion, we took a break from race watching and headed into town to meet Julia's parents, stop by Lululemon, and make a grocery store run (you can never have too much cheese). St. Paul is a really cute town, a nice downtown with an eclectic mix of shops, coffeeshops, restaurants, and tree-lined streets with beautifully maintained older homes - it just needs to be a thousand miles south and located in an area that gets minimal snow. I've become a weather wimp since moving to Virginia!

After we got back to Julia's, her friend Angela stopped by to help us drink wine, eat cheese and watch the race (I've read Angela's blog for awhile and love that she worked "cream cheese frosting" into the blog address - now THAT is something I am interested in!). And what would a weekend with triathletes be without a visit to the pool for some laps. We did that Sunday morning to earn our coffee and bagels. Unfortunately, Sunday was a travel home day for me. But I really enjoyed spending a weekend with Julia, Sarah, and Liz where the onlys thing on the agenda were to chat, eat, and do some running and swimming in between watching Kona. I'm the youngest of the group and everyone else has done alot more than me, experienced so much more, both in sport and in life, and I feel really lucky to have such great women in my life to be role models and give me advice. Thank you guys for a really great weekend!

And if you are wondering if I brought Salted Nut Rolls home - I did. But they did not make it past Monday. Sads.