A Cabela

We are at the Cabela's store in Owatonna, Minnesota (map). This store has a couple dozen RV spaces on one end of the lot, completely separate from a number of truck spaces on the other end. It's a bit close to the freeway, but otherwise not an unpleasant place to spend the night. There was some serious weather north of us, with tornado and thunderstorm warnings, but all we saw was a bit of rain and wind. As with most Cabela's stores, there is an RV dump, water, and other amenities.

We had a fantastic day yesterday with our niece and her grandmother. We picked them up at their hotel downtown and then drove over to the Mall of America. We had a very pleasant lunch at the Twin Cities Grill before wandering around the massive complex a bit, checking out the aquarium and the Nickelodeon-themed amusement park in the center of it all. As shrines to American consumerism go, this one pretty much takes the cake, but when all is said and done, it's just a mall.

The mall has its own light rail station and we put them on the train to the airport, just a couple stops away, at the end of the afternoon. By the time we were ready to hit the road, however, we got more disturbing news from our boat broker. It would appear that the boat we were interested in seeing in New Orleans is a bit misrepresented. That's been a common theme with the last few boats, and I mentioned to the broker that the Yachtworld web site should really be called FantasyLand. He suggested FraudWorld might be more appropriate.

In this case, the photos attached to the listing are several years old, from when the current owners first purchased the boat. It's been sitting uncared-for for the last three or four years, and is in rough shape. On top of that, one of the generators is inoperative, and one of the main engines had a compression problem that may or may not have been properly repaired. We are now seriously reconsidering whether we even want to drive down to see it.

Since we found out there were issues, albeit without all those details, before we even got on the road, we decided to try to stay pretty close to where we were, rather than start a marathon trek south only to abandon it later. The Mall of America is very clear about no overnight parking, as is the rest of the city of Bloomington, including the Walmart. So instead we drove the eight miles or so to the Walmart in Eagan, since it was not on the no-no list. Unsurprisingly, we found the lot posted as No Overnight Parking, and so instead we headed south to Lakeville, and the closest truck stop.

Given that this truck stop was about the closest to Minneapolis/St. Paul with overnight parking, and it was Sunday evening, it was not very surprising that the lot was already full at 6pm. There were a couple of smaller spots on the edge of the lot where we might have fit, but when a truck stop is that busy, we think it's pushing our luck to try to spend the night. I'm sure by midnight the place was an absolute zoo, and hell hath no fury like a trucker with no place to park when his legally mandated rest period comes up.

We instead continued south on the freeway. There was both a truck stop and a Walmart a bit north of here, but having come this far we decided to continue to Cabela's anyway, where we knew we'd be welcome and it would probably be a bit quieter. We decided to wait here until the broker called back with the gory details of the problems with the New Orleans boat, a call which came first thing this morning.

We've spent the whole morning regrouping. Among other things, we need to get ourselves settled someplace with high-speed Internet access starting Wednesday night so we can participate in a teleconference. That's actually more of a challenge here in the Midwest than I thought it would be.

We finally decided to continue on more or less our present course at least as far as Land Between the Lakes, Kentucky, where yet another boat has just come on the market. Since we had made tentative plans to swing by and see friends in the Des Moines area on our way south, that's the direction we will head today. We'll probably be just over the Iowa border someplace tonight, and in the Des Moines area tomorrow afternoon.

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

We are at the Lowry Grove trailer park in the St. Anthony district of Minneapolis (map). We are here because it is really the closest parking spot to downtown; as long as we were paying $37.50 for the privilege, though, we were happy to have the power to run the air conditioners in the heat of the afternoon. Other than that, this is a typical "trailer park" which is a distinctly different animal from an "RV park." For a while, I lived in a park very much like this one in San Jose, in my 32' Fleetwood Flair.

After we had exhausted all our usual freebie overnight resources, we turned to our Woodall's directory -- the least-used of all our camping directories -- and this park was listed (many parks of this sort are not). Also, our friend Ben, who grew up just a mile from here, reported that he stays here in his Prevost when he is in town, so we knew the place could accommodate Odyssey. Louise took advantage of the on-site laundromat, and we walked the half mile or so to the St. Anthony Village Pub for dinner on the patio, next to the Bocce court, which was quite popular on a pleasant evening.

We came to Minneapolis principally because it was more or less on our route to Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, where there is a boat we had planned to see. Once we had it on the route, we started making plans around it, and specifically our niece is spending a few days here on her way from California to her summer camp in Bemidji. Today is her last day, and she needs to be back at the airport this afternoon to meet up with the other campers and catch the bus to the camp.

We also have some friends who are in the process of moving here from Florida, and we were hoping we might catch them. However, it turns out that they will not be arriving until July. We also figured if we were going to be in town for a few days with these visits, that we'd try to take in some more of the city, as we really enjoyed ourselves when we were here for a conference a couple years ago. Back then, however, we had a good excuse to get ourselves a more pleasant, convenient, and inexpensive parking spot at a local church, an option not available on this visit.

Yesterday, before we left St. Peter, we had an email exchange with our boat broker that, after a day of discussion and looking at maps, has caused us to change our plans. I had been planning a grand loop of sorts, a backwards "C" starting in Sturgeon Bay and then proceeding to Lake Erie and down the east coast to the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. A few weeks ago we learned that the boat on Lake Erie is in rough shape, and is probably not a candidate for us. Yesterday we learned that the one in Sturgeon Bay is not much better. Neither boat is even in the water this season.

On top of all of that, a boat that we want to see in New Orleans has just been lowered in price. The new price is below one of those "magic numbers" that will mean it will probably get a lot more interest now. So after careful consideration, we've decided to forego seeing the boats in the upper Midwest, in favor of turning south here and heading downriver to New Orleans. As such, the only reason we continued all the way here yesterday is to meet up with our niece.

We'll be rolling out of here in a few minutes to pick her and her grandmother up at their hotel downtown. There's no way to park the bus anywhere in the heart of the city, and so we've decided instead to then head to the Mall of America, where we can easily park for the day (no overnight allowed, though) and have lunch, plus we think she'll get a kick out of it. There are lots of things to keep us all occupied until it is time for her to go the airport, which is just a ten minute light rail ride from the mall.

When we are done at the mall, we will head south out of town. Once we are out of the city limits, we should have some more overnight parking options available to us.

Land rush

We are at the Riverside Park in Saint Peter, Minnesota (map). Saint Peter is a quaint little town right on US-169, and this is a lovely little park. They have pedestals here with 30-amp power for $20 per night, and in yesterday's muggy weather we decided that was a bargain. We have a nice spot right along the Minnesota River.

As I wrote here Wednesday, we spent Thursday driving around the southeastern corner of South Dakota looking at properties. We had a list of six parcels, all under $10,000, but we eliminated one of those because it already had a house on it (yes, incredibly, a house for less than ten grand), and we just did not want the liability of having a structure. Besides, it was the furthest from Sioux Falls, although ironically the closest to Madison.

By the end of the day, we had actually settled on a parcel that already had a street address assigned, in the city limits of Lennox, a small town just 20 minutes outside of Sioux Falls. There were actually two nearly identical parcels next door to each other, by the same seller. Since we had wrapped up our grand tour by early afternoon, we drove back to the Realtor's office to discuss details and make an offer. We offered about 80% of asking price and agreed we also wanted a "staked survey" at our expense, and also found out from our agent that he had a contractor who could handle the required mowing of the property once or twice a season. Yesterday we got an email back saying our offer had been verbally accepted, and the seller would also make us a smoking deal on the property next door if we wanted it (we don't). Now it is just a matter of waiting for the title report and finishing the paperwork.

On our way to the real estate office we made a nice stop at Falls Park to look at the falls and ascend the small observation tower there, passing the enormous John Morrell meat processing plant on our way. The entire area around the plant, including the falls, smells like smoking pork. We also enjoyed driving through the downtown area, something not really possible in Odyssey, and we noted a pleasant restaurant district as we did so.



After we finished at the Realtor's, we drove back to the Empire Mall, where we had left Odyssey in the morning as there was really no room for it in the parking lot of the giant Ford dealer that contained the car rental agency. We moved the bus across the street to the Walmart (map), the same one where we stayed two nights earlier. This time we parked adjacent to the back of the Barnes & Noble store, to try to get further away from the brutal Walmart parking-lot lights, and discovered we got free WiFi there. We drove back downtown for an excellent meal at Bros Brasserie Americano, for which Louise found a coupon on Restaurant.com. The evening weather was so pleasant that we ate on the patio, which made for great people-watching.

Yesterday we turned the car back in first thing in the morning; our total was $42 for the car and another $20 for gas at Sam's Club adjacent to Walmart -- way more cost-effective than the ~$100 it would have cost us to make the trip in the bus, plus we would not have been able to see the falls or have dinner downtown. It was a short walk from the rental agency back across the street to Walmart to get the bus. I did not blog yesterday because we wanted to get right on the road.

That's because we'd made plans to see our niece this weekend in Minneapolis. She lives in California but is on her way to summer camp in Minnesota, and spending a couple of days in the city first with her grandmother. As of yesterday morning, though, we did not know if we were going to meet today or tomorrow. On the chance we'd need to be in Minneapolis by lunch time today, we wanted to get an early start.

It wasn't long after we'd turned northeast on MN-60 from I-90, though, that Louise got word by text message that tomorrow would work better for them, and so we decided to end the day a bit earlier and not push all the way to the city yesterday. This little park was listed in Don Wright's book, and when we rolled into town we decided it would make a nice stop.

We took the scooters out and rode around town a bit in search of dinner. I had hoped to eat at the Cedars Grille in the historic Konsbruck Hotel, but we discovered that both had closed permanently, probably fairly recently. Instead we rode across the river to the Whisky River restaurant, which was quite popular on a Friday night. We shared the prime rib special, which was more than enough to feed both of us.

In a few minutes we will get rolling to Minneapolis. We were unable to find any inexpensive parking in the city, so we will have to bite the bullet and spring for an RV park while we are there. We'll spend just a night or two before heading east toward Wisconsin, where we plan to look at a boat.

Don't forget Winona

We are at the Elks lodge in Winona, Minnesota (map). It's basically just a concrete parking lot, but it was on the route and free. We've passed quite a number of state parks, and it was tempting to settle in for a few days, but holiday weekends are never a good time for that, and we feel the need to be further south before slowing down, so we will be in striking distance of the gulf.

Speaking of holiday weekends, our next stop will be the casino downriver in Marquette, Iowa. They are reputed to have some 15-amp power available, and we will get an early start today to see if we can snag some. We may end up settling in there to wait out the holiday madness.

We very much enjoyed the Great River Road yesterday and are looking forward to more of it today. In Lake City, which claims to be the birthplace of water skiing, we had sweeping views across the water. I should note here for anyone thinking of doing the road that there is actually a Great River Road on each side of the Mississippi, and we are, of course, on the western one. More information can be found in several spots on the web:

http://www.experiencemississippiriver.com/
http://www.byways.org/explore/byways/2279/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_River_Road

Many of the ten river states have their own web sites dedicated to their portions of the roads as well.

Photo by Jvstin, used under a Creative Commons license.

Hidden treasure

We are at the Treasure Island Resort and Casino. Not the one with the perennially sinking pirate ship in Las Vegas, but rather the one in Welch, Minnesota, just upstream of Red Wing (map). The Prairie Island tribe operates a full-service RV park here, but we are instead parked in the truck and bus lot across the street (hey, we're a bus). Actually, we are told that dry camping along the grassy area in the RV park, where hookups are $22, is also free (with no time limit), but our general aversion to these types of RV parks sent us to this more industrial lot.

We did partake of the nice buffet, which was actually quite good and sported an impressive variety for $13.50. It was a little annoying that I had to walk across the casino to the bar, though, to get a couple glasses of wine with dinner. The casino is a large and rambling affair, but they have a good sized non-smoking area, and free beverage stations throughout.

After leaving our nice digs in Minneapolis yesterday, we basically just wanted to clear out of the city. While I had entertained thoughts of visiting the Mall of America, just for amusement value, several of our friends here informed us that overnight parking anywhere in the city is prohibited by ordinance, and I did not want to be scrambling to find parking after an afternoon there. So instead we meandered down state highway 55 into the town of Hastings.

Hastings had a Wal-Mart, which we needed for some supplies. That would have been a fine overnight stop as well, but it was still early in the day. So we continued across town to the free municipal dump station (thanks, Hastings!) at the Department of Public Works, and then continued along the Great River Road until we landed here. After dinner, we walked down to the river; in addition to the casino and RV park, the tribe operates a nice marina facility and a boat launch.

Immediately downstream from here is the enormous Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant, the two massive containment buildings clearly visible from here over the adjacent RV park. Beyond that is Mississippi Lock and Dam #3, which we'd go see except the visitor center is closed (due, I believe, to a Corps of Engineers improvement project at the lock).

In a few minutes we will move along, continuing downstream on the Great River Road, which is also US-61 along this stretch. Our "plan," such as it is, has us ambling along the Mississippi in the general direction of the gulf coast unless and until we get called to a disaster. We'll try to stay north of the confluence of the Ohio as long as we can, to keep out of the heat, until we have more concrete direction.

Twin cities wrap-up

We are still in the church parking lot in Uptown. Our conference ended Sunday evening, but it was exhausting, and it has taken us until now to recuperate and catch up. Part of our obligation as appointed delegates to the assembly is to produce a report, which we do in the form of a blog. It took each of us several hours to finish our reports, and we've also been wrapped up in Red Cross curriculum development over the last two days.

Speaking of which, one of the lead developers has been deployed to Texas (to the same city we were in for Dolly two years ago) in anticipation of Alex, so Louise has had to take on more of that work as well. She had a conference call yesterday afternoon while I rode downtown for an 80-minute massage (ahhhh), whereas my call is coming up in another hour and a half.

The massage was a direct result of an "80-minutes for the price of an hour" flyer that we picked up at the Pride Festival on Saturday. It was a great festival and I wished we could have spent more time there, but Saturday and Sunday were our two busiest days. We ended up at the festival by marching there from the convention center with some 3,000 of our fellow Unitarian Universalists to witness for marriage equality, as part of our Standing on the Side of Love campaign. Although witnessing for marriage equality at a Pride Festival is somewhat akin to preaching to the choir.

I generally don't pick up these sorts of flyers, but $75 for an 80-minute massage is a bargain in any major city, so I jumped on it. The joint was run by Aveda, and the therapist pitched products to me when she was done, the first time that's happened to me (although Louise gets the pitch more or less every time).

In addition to the often dry business of the association, the conference had a number of highlights for me, including the march. One was a surprise visit from Minnesota Senator Al Franken. Senator Franken is a very funny guy, and his speech was both amusing and moving. At one point he even choked up a bit, a side of Al that I'd never seen either in the comedian or in the distinguished gentleman from Minnesota. Earlier in the conference we met and heard from the Secretary of State, whose office had to deal with the fallout of Franken's hotly contested election.

As usual it was great to catch up with many dear friends. We had nearly perfect weather for most of our stay, having only had to run the air conditioner one day. Scooters are a perfect way to get around town here in the nice weather, and we saw hundreds of them, including perhaps the largest inventory of any scooter shop we've ever visited when we dropped by Scooterville so Louise could purchase the Go-Go Gear jacket she's been lusting after since they were first announced.

(This armored riding jacket is my birthday gift from my Mom last year. I'm so glad to finally have it! Thanks, Mom! -Louise)

Minneapolis also turned out to be the confluence of a number of blog readers. In addition to Craig whom we saw Wednesday and Brian and Hillary from Thursday, we also met a different Brian on Monday and fellow NüRVers Ben and Karen yesterday. It was great meeting with every one while we were in town.

Mostly due to the perfect weather, this has been a great stay for dining as well. We ate out nightly, with Porter and Frye, Ichiban (Teppanyaki), Skywaters (in the Hilton), and Loring Park Kitchen having been our choices in walking distance of the convention center. When not downtown, we ate here in Uptown or nearby Lynlake at Pizza Luce, El Meson (walking distance), and The View (on Lake Calhoun, which we later rode around). All our choices proved to be excellent, but then again there are so many restaurants here that we could afford to stick to the ones with good on-line reviews.

In fact, the neighborhoods here have been so attractive that we are a bit sad to be leaving, but we feel we need to vacate in consideration of the church, not wanting to overstay our welcome. So after today's conference call we will head out on the road. Absent any specific assignment from the Red Cross, we will mosey down the Mississippi on the Great River Road, and should be somewhere near Red Wing tonight.

Switching Channels

Just a quick note to let everyone know that we are alive and well and parked at the First Universalist Church of Minneapolis (map), who have generously agreed to host us here as we attend the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, being held this year at the Minneapolis Convention Center.

This is a great spot, because we are actually parked in a fenced yard, so it's somewhat private (even though we are surrounded by apartments), it's in a great neighborhood, known as Uptown, with lots of neat restaurants, and the staff is generally in the office all day while we are out at our meetings, so there is someone to keep an eye on things. There is also a 15-amp power outlet, so we've avoided running the generator and annoying the neighbors.

When we are at General Assembly we do not have any extra bandwidth for almost anything else, including posting here. We do keep a separate blog on our conference activities, which is actually our official report, as voting delegates, to the Board of Directors of our congregation.

Regular posts will resume here once we finish our conference. In the meantime I will mention that we arrived here fairly late Tuesday evening, after our long day at Camping World and dumping the tanks at Cabela's. After we got settled in, regular readers, fellow bus nuts, and now long time friends Brian and Hillary came over for a quick pre-conference visit, and brought with them a wonderful home-made dinner including fresh home-made bread -- yum. They also brought with them their new family, a pair of beautiful little girls they have adopted since the last time we saw them. I must say the girls, 8 and 10, were exceptionally well behaved and even had an interest in buses, and we very much enjoyed our visit with the whole family.

The Rogers shuffle

We are at the Camping World in Rogers, Minnesota (map). However, we spent last night down the street at the Cabela's store (map).

We got a very late start from Wadena yesterday, between setting up all the equipment and having to wait for printer paper -- the stuff they sent with the printer was too thick and kept jamming. So we rolled into Rogers fairly late. We decided to put off our Camping World shopping till today and headed right to Cabela's. We knew they had a restaurant, albeit with a limited deli/grill type menu, and we were expecting to meet reader and fellow bus enthusiast Craig.

After deploying the dish, still a very tweaking-intensive affair due to ongoing problems with the hardware, we did some quick research on other nearby dining alternatives, but none was in walking distance. As Craig arrived by motorcycle, that sealed the deal and we walked into the store, only to find the cafe already closed. Hmph. We had to pull a scooter out so we could ride the couple miles with Craig to nearby Maynard's, which was actually quite good and had some nice happy hour specials.

It was curious to us that the enormous truck and RV lot had only trucks, plus us, and no other RV's last night. That's because it turns out that Camping World actually has 30-amp power pedestals for its customers, and although we did not need them yesterday afternoon, in today's heat and humidity the power to run the air conditioners has been quite welcome. We both had Red Cross training development to do today, along with a one-hour conference call on the subject. After we wrapped up our call we went into the store and dropped $250, making this one of the most expensive 30-amp pedestals in our history. In addition to replacing the $90 folding step that I destroyed by running over it with the bus, we bought two new chairs for the roof deck and a fancy propane-fired campfire.

Shortly we will leave our "free" power behind and head into Minneapolis, where we need to be squared away for our conference tomorrow. First we will head back to Cabela's and use their free dump station; Camping World also has a dump, but it is one of the new coin-operated systems. I think they charge a dollar for it; this is the same system Flying-J is installing where a dump token will cost you $10, or $5 with fill-up.

Accidental relief workers

We are at the Elks lodge in Wadena, Minnesota (map). There is a lone electric pedestal here with two 20-amp circuits and a water spigot, and we took advantage of them to top up the batteries and the water tanks.

US-10, which passes through Wadena, has been on our route plan since we first decided to follow the Hi-Line. And we knew from news reports Friday that a tornado had touched down here and done some damage, but we did not really realize how bad it was until we pulled into town, and drove straight across the path of destruction.

The tornado turned out to be an EF-4, touching down three miles south of town, cutting through town from south to north like a buzz saw, and continuing for another seven miles before lifting, leaving behind a swath of destruction ten miles long and a quarter mile wide. It completely obliterated the high school, the bus garage, the Wellness Center, the municipal pool, the county fairgrounds, several businesses, some homes, and a church. Many more homes and businesses suffered less extensive damage. In all, over 230 homes were damaged, and from touring the area I would estimate that some 10% or so of those were completely destroyed. Luckily, no one in this town was killed, and there were only 34 injuries, mostly minor.

When we first arrived we had planned to spend two nights here, to get a few projects done. So we knew we had some time, and after seeing what happened, we made a few phone calls and learned that one of our Red Cross associates was handling technology for the Minnesota relief operations, but he was some 240 miles away, in Rochester. When we called him to let him know we were here in Wadena, he was thrilled, because he was already faced with figuring out how to get someone up here to survey sites and set up equipment. We pulled the scooters out and headed downtown to find the small handful of other Red Cross staff already on the ground.

We spent most of the afternoon yesterday doing a site survey and testing equipment connectivity; the equipment came up from Rochester with a courier. After we satisfied ourselves that the equipment was working we sent the courier back; it took him the whole day to make the round trip. We then attended the daily town meeting run by the mayor.

I have to say, for a small town in rural America, this place is well prepared. The mayor, wearing a lime-green safety vest, ran a well-organized meeting with a sense of humor, calling in sequence each department head and agency chief to provide the status of debris removal, restoration of utility service, progress on finding alternate classrooms for the upcoming school year, where to obtain assistance, and how to get trucks and heavy equipment to affected properties. The meeting was simultaneously broadcast on local radio station KWAD. The town is well on its way to recovery, and they have yet to see a dime of federal or state assistance. The city also has an excellent web site, complete with recovery information, and you can see some photos of the damage there.

This morning we've loaded up the scooters in anticipation of a hail storm later today, and shortly we will head down to the designated Red Cross facility in Odyssey to unpack and set up equipment. Once that's done, our job here is mostly finished, and we will continue east towards Minneapolis. Our coworkers in Rochester will support this site from there, and someone else will come up to tear down the equipment here when it is no longer needed.

While we were here, we did get to eat dinner at the "Uptown" restaurant which is, uhh, downtown, and was quite good. The place was packed on Saturday night, and I suspect the relief efforts have something to do with that. The tornado passed just two or three blocks west of the main street downtown, sparing the historic old buildings including two restaurants and a cinema, all with wonderful neon signs from circa 1930 or so. Last night we ate at the Nite Owl, a bar/burger/pizza joint on the east edge of town, and it, too, was packed. On our way there we discovered the city park across the street, complete with RV hookups, $24 per night.

Photo by jenniferrt66, used under a Creative Commons license.

Missile Away

We are parked at the Wal-Mart in Dilworth, Minnesota (map), an eastern suburb of Fargo, ND.

We had a fairly short drive yesterday, because we first made a couple hour detour to the Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile Site, where we took the one-hour tour of the "Oscar-Zero" facility. This is one of only two decommissioned Launch Control Centers (LCCs) allowed under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty to be preserved for historical purposes; the other one is operated by the National Park Service and is located near Wall, South Dakota.

We both really enjoyed the tour. Given that there are still 45 fully operational LCCs, substantially identical to this one, in control of 450 nuclear Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, it's impossible to walk away from this tour without a mostly indescribable, somewhat disturbing feeling in the pit of your stomach. Also, it is remarkable just how boring and mundane is the job of ensuring mutual destruction and the annihilation of humanity.

One of the ten silos controlled by O-0 has been preserved just a couple miles east of Cooperstown, and we passed it as we drove away. There was really no place to park the bus, so we could not walk over to read the interpretive signs or view the silo blast door from outside the fence.

After leaving Cooperstown we had an uneventful but windy drive here. The wind was so fierce that when we were driving east, with virtually a direct tailwind, our fuel mileage went up by 60% or so. When we were driving south, I had to work hard with both hands on the wheel to stay on the road. To minimize the impact, from Page we drove east all the way to I-29 at Gardner, but then did the southbound portion on old US-81, where I could keep it to 45 or so. By the time we got here we decided to quit for the day and wait for less windy conditions, and we drove around the store until we found a nice spot partially in the lee of the building.

We needed a Wal-Mart stop anyway, because I was out of windshield repair kits, and they had none at our last Wal-Mart stop in Minot. We had taken a rock strike a few miles west of Plentywood, and I ended up using up both my kits on it, since the first kit I tried had a loose plunger and lost most of its resin without getting any in the chip. If you missed it, I described in great detail how we fix windshield damage in this post.

Now that winds are a bit calmer (but massive wind turbines in the distance tell us it is rarely still here), we will continue east. Our route from here will be on US-10, which will pick up the Mississippi River in Little Falls and follow it all the way to the twin cities. Tonight we might stay in Wadena, where our Elks guide says there is a lodge with parking, assuming it is still open after Thursday's tornadoes.

Photo of Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile Site by joevare, used under a Creative Commons license.

North Shore, Lake Superior

We are at the municipal campground on Burlington Bay, in Two Harbors, MN, along the north shore of Lake Superior (map).

Yesterday we diverted from US-53 onto MN-1, a relatively twisty and hilly road (well, for Minnesota, anyway) that loops through the Superior National Forest in the north-eastern corner of the state. That road deposited us on the lake shore at the Tettegouche State Park, which we thought would be a nice place to camp. Apparently, so did many other people, and the place was full by the time we arrived. The lake shore route is apparently a popular summer destination, for campgrounds to be full mid-week.

Our choices were to backtrack along 1 and camp in the forest, or head south-west along the lake shore on MN-61 for 30 miles or so to this place. While this is not really our sort of campground (it is very much like a commercial park, only run by the city), we got a great spot with an unobstructed view of the lake.

Today we will continue along the lake to Duluth and into Wisconsin.

Burlington Bay Campground, owned and operated by the municipality of Two Harbours, MN. Our campsite looks directly over Lake Superior.

Voyageurs National Park

Just a quick update today...

We are at the Woodenfrog State Campground, on the edge of Voyageurs National Park (map). The national park itself is mostly water, and the only camping is the boat-in variety. There are no wooden frogs here -- the name was the surname of an early settler in this region.

We have been on US-53 from International Falls, where we left MN-11. Quite pleasant there yesterday, although the place typically sports the lowest temperatures in the lower 48 during the winter. Brrr.

Today we will continue south on US-53.

On the Lake of the Woods

We are camped at Zippel Bay State Park in Minnesota, on the shore of the Lake of the Woods (map). We had originally planned to stay at the municipal campground in Warroad, which is as far north as Odyssey has ever been, however the place was really unappealing, so we decided to press on.

There are actually three primitive campgrounds in this large park, and we are at the one closest to the lake. We are the only ones here, and it is dark and quiet. We can't see the lake from our site, but it is only a short walk, and it is quite lovely. We are in a stand of birches, which made getting into the campground quite a project. We had to back in off the "main" road (itself a narrow one-lane through the trees), and the squeeze was so tight I had to back and fill several times.

The guide said there was water here, and our tank was mostly empty. The water, however, is dispensed from an old-fashioned hand-pump. It's located only a few dozen feet from our site, though, so we rigged up three hoses, our electric water pump, and a wash tub to pump water out of the well and into our tank. Louise took a photo of the Rube Goldberg setup.

North of here is a finger of the US that juts above the 49th parallel. There is a section of land there that is only accessible either through Canada or via the lake itself, and I believe it is all part of a Native American reservation. I found it interesting that we could cross the lake from here and not be in Canada. I say that, but, of course, it would require a speedboat -- looking north across the lake, we see only water to the horizon.

Today we passed through Karlstad, where we saw an ATV-on-a-stick, some generic model from Yamaha or Bombardier, but with tracks on it instead of wheels. It was rotating like a trade-show display, and we thought it was an advertisement for an ATV dealer, until we noticed the Hummer H2 nearby, which also had tracks. Then we saw the Mattracks plant, and we understood. We gotta get us some of these for Odyssey.

We also passed through Warroad, as I mentioned, where Marvin Windows is located. They have a huge plant, which seems to be buoying up the entire economy of the region.

We have been traversing MN-11, a bit north of US-2, which we will rejoin near Duluth.

Sean pumping water in the distance. Note red and white hoses feeding from old-fashioned hand-pump into Odyssey.