The Ryder Cup Is In Town

How to get from here to there? Sunday is the final day of the Renaissance Festival and we plan to be there. The weather is supposed to be beautiful and we also need to buy our season tickets for next year's fest. (We would have bought them last week, but I forgot my credit cards on the kitchen table - my bad!) The south metro area, however, seems to be the lodestone for events this weekend, and the traffic has the potential to be horrid.

Yesterday started out foggy, but by mid-morning the fog had burned off
and it was a glorious, sunny day. Here's the first green at Hazeltine. The
grounds are perfect and the course is getting high grades from the golfers
as well as the spectators. 

The 41st Ryder Cup is being played near the Festival grounds at Hazeltine Golf Course. It's one of the most popular events in golf and pulls in an international crowd. No parking is allowed anywhere near the course. Instead, nearby public parking is based at Canterbury Downs race track and bus shuttles are running to the golf course from there. The crowds for the event have been huge, loud, and very appreciated by the players. I'll be driving down some of the same roads as the spectators, and I suspect I won't be as appreciative.

Golf legend Arnold Palmer died on September 25th. He is being remembered
and celebrated during the Ryder Cup. He was one of the great ones in the
sport of golf, and considered a genuine and warm person. 

I've looked into a variety of different routes, most of which are equally bad. There are a limited number of ways to get to the southwestern part of the larger Minneapolis area. There are rivers, in this case the Minnesota River, that get in the way of a straight route from here to there. I'm probably just going to build in an extra half-hour of travel time and creep through some bumper-to-bumper traffic.

250,000 people are expected to attend the Ryder Cup on one
of the tournament days. There are shuttles from the south, buses
from downtown Minneapolis, and other locations where shuttle
buses will be available. So far the reports from spectators have
been positive. 

DH has been working on the castle's second tier walls and he should have the southern section finished today. He's been listening to the Ryder Cup while building, but today's build is almost complete, so he might actually be able to watch the golf for a while. He'll be very happy about that.

The players were ready and the golf has been excellent. I haven't been
watching - the Bead Shop Hop begins today and I've been tied up
with preparations and publicity for that. But I've had the competition
on the TV in the back room, so I did have a chance to listen to some of
the competition. 

I hope you have a wonderful weekend and a great start to your October. I'm hoping for sunshine, blue skies, and minimal traffic problems. Enjoy!