As many of you already know, I spent the last couple of weeks on vacation up at my cabin in northern Minnesota. I love getting away from the usual hustle and bustle and hanging out up there, it’s always very low key. We spend time out on the lake swimming, paddle boarding, tubing and wake boarding. Most evenings we throw something on the grill or go out to one of our favorite restaurants.
When we want to go on an outing, we often explore some of the small towns in the area. It’s a fairly touristy area, so there are lots of fun shops and restaurants to check out. This year we decided to check out one of the local festivals. Every year in a little town called Pequot Lakes they celebrate Bean Hole Days in mid-July. We had never been before, but we’d heard all about it, so we decided it was finally time to check it out.
So you’re probably wondering…. what exactly is Bean Hole Days? Well, every year they make homemade baked beans from a secret recipe and ceremoniously bury them over hot coals to cook overnight. The next day at noon, they raise the beans and the Bean Hole Queen tastes them. If she says they’re done, they start serving them up to everyone.
As you can see, a lot of people show up for the beans.
There were two lines of people that seemed to go on forever.
Finally after about 30 minutes, we got to the “start” of the line.
As we were waiting, we saw one of the bean “pit crew” being interviewed by local media.
When we were close to the front of the line, it was time for the backhoe and the pit crew to raise another pot of beans.
This is the pit that all of the pots were buried in.
And here is a fresh pot of beans…..enough to feed quite a crowd!
We noticed that all of the pots are named, this one is Lena and we also saw Sven and Olie.
So was it worth the wait? I have to say it was. The beans were tasty and it was definitely an interesting experience!
On top of a free lunch of beans, it was also a beautiful day as you can see from the photos. After lunch we spent some time shopping at the various craft booths and just enjoyed the warm weather. We may not go to Bean Hole Days every year, but I think we’ll be back!
Stay tuned for part 2 of my vacation. I’ll fill you in with the saga of our wet basement with before and after photos.