The Sandcastle

Another day of driving the Great River Road through mostly rural country. This is the type of area where roads had rural route numbers instead of names. When 911 decided every road had to have a name, someone had to pick those names. Several roads here appear to have been named after the people who lived along them. A bunch were named after birds. But someone with a sense of humor named some of these: “Fishy Waters Drive” “Daredevil Road” “Plum Nuts”. “Quill” made me think of Shakespeare until I saw the next one was named “Porcupine”. When I saw “Meander” I wondered if the next one would be “Wandering”. Close but no prize; it was just “Wander”. And we can all guess what’s probably down the one named “Prince of Peace”.

Greenwood Golf Course advertises itself as “A Site to be Holed.”

Dave manged not to drive off the road when we passed a car parked on the shoulder only to discover a bunch of nearly naked women on the other side of it slathering themselves with lotion. A pile of inner tubes rested beside them just waiting to wrap themselves around the women to go floating down the Mississippi River.

At last we arrived in Bemidji, Minnesota. We had planned to begin our time here at the Headwaters Science Center until we discovered it had nothing to do with the Headwaters per se. It was a typical science museum. Which we typically enjoy visiting. But this trip we are focusing on the river and the cultures around it so we decided to skip this science museum today. Maybe some day we’ll be back here and we’ll go play with their toys then.

Instead we made our first stop at the Beltrami County History Center.

They have several galleries of displays. We spent the most time in the one about transportation. This scale model of a canoe was obviously a labor of love. The maker even made woven seats for it.

The Jefferson Highway was organized from Winnipeg to New Orleans back in 1915, years before anyone decided to define the Great River Road. Check this out. Seventeen places in Minnesota offered free camping along the way and many of those also offered free fuel. Nowadays some small towns still offer free camping to tourists but I know of nowhere you can get free fuel just for stopping there.

We’ve been on the Jefferson Highway before. There’s a street named that in Osseo, Minnesota, that crosses railroad tracks we once researched and modeled. Back then we had no idea the Jefferson Highway was anything more than that city street. I enjoy learning how these bits of my life and the lives of others all fit together.

One of the things Bemidji is known for is Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. This is probably the most famous statue of them. You will find others around town and in other northern Minnesota towns as well. To get a sense of the size of these, check out the person standing right in front of them in the side view picture.

There was a detour on the Great River Road in Bemidji so we took a detour of our own to have lunch and buy groceries. We disagreed on which road would likely take us back to the Great River Road. For perhaps the only time ever, I was right!

Finally we reach our destination for this trip: Itasca State Park, Headwaters of the Mississippi River. At the campground check-in station they sell fire and ice. Both appear to be popular today. They have two sites available with electricity if we promise to only stay one night. So the next morning we pack up and leave the campsite but we don’t leave the park. We haven’t yet fulfilled the reason we came here in the first place.

The park has a really good outdoor museum with lots of signage to read. For me, the most important ones are the ones about finding the headwaters.

Then you walk, or in my case ride my Segway, 800 feet down the trail to the headwaters location.  There you can walk across the rocks or the log bridge or the waters themselves of the not-so-mighty-here Mississippi River.  If you think to take a towel you will be more prepared than 99.9% of the visitors.

Mary Gibbs gets a lot of the credit for this park and the museum is named for her.

We ate lunch there. Not because the food was any better than anywhere else but because I like to eat in park buildings. Dave had a hamburger and I had BBQ pork and we each had a desert. I, of course, only ate half my carrot cake and saved the rest for later. That’s another thing I like to do.

As we left the park we passed the North Gate Grocery & Cafe and the Itasca Campground all painted dark brown trying to pretend to be part of the park. It doesn’t look like it is working for them though.

It’s been a great trip. Lows in the 50s and highs mostly in the 70s with an occasional low 80s. Windy the first couple of days but no rain the entire time. Yes, we picked the right time to make this trip. I hope you enjoyed it.

TTYL,

Linda

We visited the Cuyuna Range Historical Museum in Crosby, Minnesota. Lots of stuff but little interpretive signage.

Some of the things brought back my own memories, though, like being in this depot looking at a Brownie Scout uniform and remembering when my Brownie troop took the train for a day trip from Decatur, Illinois, to St. Louis, Missouri, and back.

This display made me glad I only had home permanents as a child.

We also visited the Croft Mine Historic Park in Crosby. They offered a simulated mine tour but no one knew where to find the tour guide so we didn’t get to do that. They had lots of outside interpretive signage that didn’t photograph well at all so I guess you need to go yourself if you want to learn about mining in Minnesota. I couldn’t resist including this picture of the the thing that sets off the dynamite blasts, though. Now I know it’s not a figment of the imagination of the coyote and road runner cartoonist.

After those two visits we did what we usually did for the 4th of July when we lived in a house. Stayed home. Back then we figured the holiday weekends were when the inexperienced went camping so we went the weekend before or after.  Of course this time home was in a campground but the Gull Lake Recreation Area was calmer than many where we have camped so we survived just fine. The staff put flags at all the campsites which was all the celebration we felt we needed. We are grateful for the freedom this country offers us but we don’t feel a need to mingle with crowds to express that gratitude.

The next day we moved on. We saw what, at first, looked like a couple of those big round hay bales each sitting on its own trailer. A closer look showed them to be duck blinds. They fooled me so I imagine they fool the geese and pheasants that are likely hunted from them. At least I “think” I’m smarter than the birds.

There was a curve in the road facing a building missing its front corner. A new version of a drive-in?

North of Aitkin, Minnesota, are several sod farms. We pay people to grow grass! So that when we build a new house we don’t have to wait to have a lawn. We Americans must be the most impatient people in the world.

The Great River Road turned off the pavement onto a gravel road. We followed it, catching an occasional glimpse of the river. But, shortly after we crossed Hwy 169 we decided we’d had enough bouncing so we turned back and took Hwy 169 north to Grand Rapids.

It’s a good thing we did. We didn’t have enough time for the Forest History Center in Grand Rapids even having taken the faster route. We got to see the inside displays but missed the whole logging camp with costumed interpreters. If you go here, allow at least a half a day for your visit, please.

We would have stayed overnight to see the rest of it but they would be closed for the next four days and we couldn’t stay here that long and finish the trip before we need to be back in the Cities so we moved on.

We passed “Squirrel Keepers Road”. Why? Is there a shortage of them? Do they need to be hoarded? If so, I’m glad it is someone else, not me, doing it.

Then we followed a stretch of Hwy 2, which we’d last traveled nearly a year ago much further west, this time on our way to Federal Dam, Minnesota, and the Leech Lake Recreation Area where we stopped for the night. We really like these Corps of Engineer parks.

TTYL,

Linda

The original plan was to get an early start to see several museums before heading north again. Then we realized we couldn’t do it all in one day. Do we pay for another day here? How close to the 4th of July weekend do we want to try to move to another park? We decide to move today and make trips back here, about an hour each way, for the local museums. So we no longer need to rush quite so much. In fact, we stop rushing at all. Our early departure time? 11:41 a.m.

On the way north I saw this:

I asked Dave if he thought there was a Purina Chow factory ahead. He said it was probably Camp Ripley since military installations often paint their water towers this way. He was right, of course.

A sign said, “Come see what I saw.” It was an ad for a chainsaw gallery. Are you all familiar with the people who use chainsaws to carve tree trunks into sculptures? This was a gallery for those artists.

It was fairly early on Tuesday afternoon when we pulled into Gull Lake Recreation Area. I think we got the next to the last site available. This is one of the most popular vacation weeks of the year. Next week will be the most popular since taking next week off extends most people’s vacation another day with Saturday being the 4th of July making Friday this week a holiday for those who work Monday through Friday. Wow, what a convoluted sentence that was!

We had planned to check in and head right back out but check in here is done by a roving ranger so we had to sit and wait for him. There was no way we were going to leave before officially making this site ours. But he eventually came and we left soon after. It was too late to go back and do a museum but we did go buy groceries, diesel fuel, and propane. Then we went to the 371 Diner for supper.

I don’t understand people who think that cooking a burger on a dirty grill so the burger tastes burnt is a good idea. Do they like eating charcoal? I don’t. Plus, I misread a sign that I thought advertised a chocolate fudge malt so I ordered one of those. It was a chocolate brownie malt. Did you ever try to drink a brownie? Through a straw? It was not one of my better meals. Cool diner, though.

The next day we did manage to get up and out early. It felt like a good stay at home day but we have much to see on this trip and we shorted ourselves a week to do it in by staying in the Twin Cities for an operating session we hadn’t anticipated attending since we didn’t even know it was scheduled.

So we headed back south on the “C. Elmer Anderson Highway.” My mind, of course, heard that as “See Elmer Anderson,” so I wonder why I would want to see a former Minnesota governor? Isn’t he dead, anyway? But then so is Charles Lindbergh and we are on our way to see him. Well, not actually him. Just a museum about him.

Unfortunately, we did that on July 1st. A new fiscal year started on July 1st and the museum changed its hours today in response to a massive budget cut. It was open yesterday when we drove by and the sign said it would be open today but that was a different fiscal year. Still, there were two cars in the parking lot. So I called the museum and a man answered and asked if he could help me. I said, “I hope so. We are sitting at your gate. Yesterday your sign said you would be open today.” So he let us come in the back way and we got to see this great museum but not the house which really is not open today.

Lindbergh was a man of many talents. He was an inventor of avionic and medical things. He was a world explorer who specialized in finding places for airfields for future airline travel. In those travels he saw Germany preparing for war then warned the US that we should stay out of that war since we weren’t nearly as prepared as the Germans were. He was the father of the kidnapped toddler. But he is mostly known as the man who flew solo from New York to Paris.

There were also exhibits about his childhood. In my favorite quote from that era he said that the Mississippi river turns every which way but always leads back to the farm, adding, “One can’t get lost–voyaging down a river.”

In all we spent and hour and a half at a museum that was closed. It was a peaceful visit. I would like to have bought a book there but the gift shop wasn’t open, either.

Then we made a quick stop at the Minnesota Fishing Museum. Once we determined it was mostly exhibits of various lures, boat motors, etc. we decided not to pay to go in. I did buy a book there, though. A book of stories about being a game warden. I expect to laugh a lot when reading it.

We drove by Donna’s Big Johns restaurant advertising “Food so great you will lick your plate.” Decided we didn’t want to see if that was true of their other diners.

By the time we got to the Minnesota Military Museum it was too late in the day to stop there. My body is grateful for that.

We did head on towards the Ripley esker, though. Since it is a “geological oddity” it doesn’t close. Just before we got there we passed an elk farm.

The esker turned out to be a place where streams flowing under glaciers caused an upheaval of the earth forming a ridgeline. A sign said it’s easier to see it when the trees don’t have leaves but here’s the best we could do to share it with you.

We stopped on our way back into our park to fill our water tank. While there I saw a bicyclist talking on a cell phone. Then another one! It amazes me how many people are unwilling to just drive, or ride in this case, without someone to keep them company. You all keep me company on our drives because I’m always taking notes of things to share with you the next time I get a good internet connection. We don’t have the best connection at Gull Lake but it’s great here in this parking lot!

TTYL,

Linda

Stayed up too late; slept too late; didn’t get on the road until after noon. Another day of not going very far. At least in terms of miles covered. We covered centuries of sites, though.

The first one was the Monticello Generating Plant. Nuclear power. Very much this century. OK, so it was actually built last century since this century is only nine years old but it is still very modern.

We’ve had a couple of days where the weather wasn’t so hot. Temperatures are down some. Wind is up some. Actually the wind is up a lot. We’re glad we aren’t driving freeways where the gusts have more potentially negative consequences.

I wonder what the relationship is between the words gusty and gusto? Surely, there must be one? I don’t want to know badly enough to take the time to research the answer, though.

We visited the Stearns History Museum in St Cloud, Minnesota.

This is one of the musems we decided not to stop at on the way to the Twin Cities because we would get a second chance at it. Today is Monday. Lots of museums are closed on Mondays. Not this one, though. It’s open every day and boy am I glad! If you ever find yourself in this vicinity, make time for a stop here.

The first gallery we visited was the Arti-Find gallery. Arti-facts were displayed in shop window type displays: Hardware Store, Sports Store, Toy Store, Sewing/Dressing Room, and Kitchen. Each of those had a sign out front with rhymes listing things you should try to find in the display. Between the two of us we managed to find most of the things. Now Dave understands why I got so involved in find-the-items computer games for awhile.

Then we went to the Gallery Theater and watched a film about the Central Minnesota granite business from quarry to finished products. It was very well done and I have new respect for the skills of the people who harvest and finish granite. Later we drove by the Stearns County Courthouse and I recognized pieces of granite they’d included in the film.

The next gallery I walked through was an 1880s prairie display of natural and cultural systems. I was most interested in the displays of various American Indian housing types and their construction techniques and the reasons behind those techniques.

The Early Settlement gallery was titled, “In Their Own Words.” I got to read people’s statements about what life was like back then and about tools they used. This personal touch made things more interesting than just looking at the things.

By the time I got to the display about Samual Pandolfo and his Pan car and town, I was too tired to really appreciate it.

But not too tired to spend a little time in the museum store where I bought a Garrison Keillor book which I know I will enjoy reading. The clerk said her book club read it and had varied reactions to it so I said, “Well, he’s not always polite in what he says.” She thought I’d hit the nail on the head. Mr Keillor may think he’s laughing with you about some of our foibles but seem people feel laughed at instead. Scandinavian/Germans aren’t often raised to see the humour in their lives but I sure do appreciate having it shown to me.

I saw a billboard that was advertising itself. It said, “Why outdoor advertising? Because no one ever goes to the bathroom during a billboard.” Whoever wrote that doesn’t know us RVers very well, huh?

Today we saw lots of evidence of Minnesota’s “other” season:  road construction.

Sartell has a linear park along the Mississippi River with porch swings along it so you can just sit, rest, think, admire or whatever suits your soul in a place like this. There are no parking lots here so by the time I dug out my camera this is the best picture I got of that but, if you look closely, you will see one of the swings at the far left above the outside mirror of our RV.

We pulled into Charles A. Lindbergh State Park just after the ranger had closed out the register for the day. So we used a credit card to pay for a night since that didn’t affect his cash drawer. Once again it looks like we’ll get a quiet Monday night with very few neighbors. That’s good. We need to stock up on those since the 4th of July is rapidly approaching.

TTYL,

Linda

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