Author: sandcastle

It was a driving trip south on the Great River Road from Minneapolis/St Paul, Minnesota, to Hannibal, Missouri, that prompted us to buy a new RV. Day after day of looking for clean public restrooms and night after night of looking for comfortable motel beds helped us decide it was time to own another RV. We sold our last one, a VW Westfalia camper, about 20 years ago. Now that we are traveling again we wanted to take all the comforts of home with us. This is the first RV we’ve owned that included our own bathroom so this little 24 foot motorhome is real luxury to us.

Now it time for us to drive another stretch of the Great River Road.

These signs help us find our way. Yes, we have maps but they don’t always give us as much detail as we need. And, yes, we have a GPS, but it doesn’t know which city streets are part of the Great River Road. Or, if it does, I don’t know how to get it to tell me so. So we use the signs as well as the maps with, of course, my database of places to go and things to see along the route.

We started this particular journey in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, a Minneapolis suburb where we used to live–back when we owned that VW camper. We started at 85th, just south of Hwy 610.

The first site we didn’t stop at was Coon Rapids Dam Regional Park. We’ve been there many times before. They have a carp festival you should attend if you like community festivals.

The first sign I’m going to tell you about on this route said, “10 doz. crawlers.”  In case you don’t know night-crawlers are a type of worm used for fishing bait. Why 10 dozen? They couldn’t do 12 dozen; that would be gross.

Another sign said “10 ton route.” It didn’t say if that’s the maximum or minimum. Or only. We only weigh half that. I hope that’s OK.

In Monticello, the hospital is across the street from the middle school. They look alike. Maybe to remind us all of how painful middle school can be?

We stopped for the first night at River Terrace Park in Monticello. We hadn’t really driven very far today but the winds are horrible and this park is right on the river. If you ever come to this park don’t get scared off before you get camped. You drive through the mobile home section first, then you go into the dining room of a house to register, then you drive to the campground portion and find this. That’s our view from our living room window.

We are here on a Sunday night in June.  We don’t promise you a spot this close to the river if you come on a weekend.  But, who knows, you might be as lucky as we are.

TTYL,

Linda

While still camped at Baker Park Reserve we watched people arriving across the road from us. The first car arrived and started setting up a HUGE tent which intruded on the site next to them. Then a car arrived pulling a boat and parked in the second site’s driveway. The first group set up an awning over the second site’s picnic table. A third vehicle carrying four people arrived and parked in the site with the first vehicle. The one with the boat moved to nearby overflow parking and a pickup truck with a truck camper in its bed and a boat pulled behind it backed into the second site. They later moved the boat to the overflow parking and re-parked their camper. In the meantime, a second HUGE tent appeared. By the time they were done they had 4 vehicles, 2 boats, 2 tents, 1 camper, 2 covered picnic tables, and least 10 people. We never heard them, though. Nice quiet neighbors. That’s the kind we like.

While staying in the Twin Cities I uploaded my Minnesota Public Park Camping database to this blog. It’s the largest one yet; it has 297 records. If you are interested in it look at the bottom of the right hand column of this blog.

REI is our primary source of freeze dried food. We shopped at two of their stores in the Twin Cities so now our food cupboard is full again. We also bought some other things there to make our lives more comfortable. Such as a couple of these seat cushions which let us sit on the daybed without falling over backwards.

We also shopped at Micro Center which bills itself as a computer department store. I should say Dave shopped there. I stayed in the RV to keep from buying a new computer. Dave needed a USB port to serial port adapter for a project he and a friend are working on. We know from experience that Micro Center is a good place to get this kind of thing. If you can keep from buying a new computer while you are there.

I saw a NAPA Auto Parts car that was dead on the side of the road. I wonder which parts he needed?

Baker Park fills up on the weekends so we needed to move back to our friend’s driveway for a couple of nights.

They are willing to have us there using their electricity because Dave is helping Tom solve a model railroad operating computer challenge. Plus, Dave rides with Tom to operating sessions; Tom prefers having company for those drives. So it’s a win-win situation. We take turns buying the pizza. That’s a win-win, too, because the guys can share their lots-of-meat pizza and Nancy and I can get all the ingredients the guys refuse to eat.

On the way there we did a bunch more errands. We finally found some Coffee Rich at Lund’s so I can continue having cereal for breakfast–for awhile, at least. We went to our rented storeroom and put more stuff in than we took out so our RV weighs a couple pounds less–like me it’s not enough of a loss but we’ll take any we can get. We went to another batteries Plus and got a second new battery for my camera so I can, once again, swap them in the middle of a museum. And we went to Walgreen’s to get my favorite type of pocket notebook in which I write the notes for these blogs.

Along the way I saw several “interesting” signs:

1. Morries.com “Voted the #1 car site by Morrie himself.” I should hope so. My Dad once told me when I was running for some office that if I didn’t vote for myself why should I expect anyone else to do so? I do wonder about Morrie though since he’s been selling cars as long as I can remember; do you suppose it’s Morrie Jr. doing the voting now?

2. McDonald’s is advertising sweet tea saying, “Get it for only $1 on any day that ends in Y.” That means you can only get it seven days in any one week. They make you feel like you need to hurry to take advantage of this deal that is available all the time. Good advertising psychology.

3. A golf advertising sign said,  “1 birdie, 3 pheasants. I am legendary.” Are they saying pheasants aren’t birds? Are they saying you can kill pheasants with golf balls? What is the message here?

4. Target Free Thursdays. The Walker Art Center has free admission every Thursday from 5-9 p.m. There’s nothing funny about this one; it’s just a good deal if you like art museums.

We keep getting messages from friends and family saying things like “So, when are you coming to see us?”  to which we say, “Not yet.”  I guess I’d better explain. Dave gets homesick. Minneapolis was home his whole life until we hit the road last year. I’m afraid if we stay here too long we will never leave again. So we made a deal we would come here for most of the summer but we would take trips away from The Cities regularly during that time so we wouldn’t get too strongly attached again. So my next posts will come from our trip up the Great River Road to the headwaters of the Mississippi River. Then we’ll be back in The Cities for a little over a week visiting more friends and letting Dave get in a couple more model railroad operating sessions. Then we go to Winnebago’s big annual together in Iowa. Then we go back to The Cities to visit some more and do all our medical appointments. So we’ll be in and out of “home” until at least the middle of August. By then we should have managed to see everyone who still wants to see us.  So, if you are one of them, be patient, please; your turn is coming.

TTYL,

Linda

We saw this setup in Thompson Hill rest area above Duluth.

There’s a generator in the back of the pickup truck. The trailer is plugged into that generator by a yellow cord you can see if you look closely. The owner is inside making lunch. Clever setup, I thought.

 Black Bear Casino is advertising, “The best chips don’t come in bags.” 

“Keep your money where your mouth is,” says Mediacom Phone. Are they saying their phone system is expensive?

Meat market advertising, “You never sausage a place.” Read that one out loud.

We stopped by Bear lake County Park in Barnum, Minnesota, to check it out. This park is on the east frontage road of I-35 but down hill enough that it probably is not noisy. Except perhaps when the loons are nesting.

  

We camped at Moose Lake City Park and Campground. We were right on Moose Lake. $26 for full-hookups. Nice, quiet place. I don’t know why I didn’t take any pictures there. Apparently I only take pictures of places we don’t camp.

I saw a Pro-Life billboard saying, “I had fingerprints seven months before I was born.” How do they know? Did they fingerprint the fetus in the womb? Why? What did it do? If they waited until it was born to fingerprint it, how do they know if it had fingerprints back then? If it was never born how do they know how many months it would have been before it was? What if it was a premature birth?

We visited the Hinckley Fire Museum. This is one of those place we always meant to go when we lived in Minnesota but never did because it was too easy to do. We thought we knew the story of this fire. The museum proved  how little of the story we knew. I apologize for the blurriness of some of these photos; I was not very steady while reading this story.

           

The fire museum is in an old depot. The railroad’s agent lived upstairs. The rooms have been refurnished “in the manner of the late 1890s.”

    

We went to Tobie’s in Hinckley for lunch. This is a famous half-way stop between the Twin Cities and Duluth. Their burgers and malts are rave worthy. As is their bakery. It is very hard for us to just drive by this place without stopping  I’m so glad we did not try to do so today.

After a stop to pick up a prescription refill and mail we parked in our friend’s driveway.  

We are having fun catching up with them and other friends while getting a model railroad operating fix. It’s nice to not have to drive 45 minutes home after the operating session. We just walked outside and went to bed. Life is good.

TTYL,

Linda