The Sandcastle

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

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