Hau Kola means "Hello Friend" in the Lakota native language.
Tonight's post comes to you from the middle of South Dakota. And by middle, I mean exit 335 on a road with 410 exits. And the numbers go down. Anyway, we started today in St. Paul, excited to leave Minnesota. Only to come to realize that it was still like 4 hours to the end of the state. We were just excited to leave it- wouldn't visit again. We did see, however, the Jolly Green Giant and his sidekick Sprout on the side of the road, as well as St. Peter's very own Pearly Gates. Gotta love the random things you see on the side of the road. Then we decided it would be a good idea to go down through Iowa, since the GPS said the border was relatively close. Well, it was, but there was no "Welcome to Iowa" sign where we were. So that was a fail. But we did (sort of) see the one on the other side of the road when we were leaving, and going back into Minnesota. At about 2:00 we entered South Dakota. We made sure that we got the Welcome to picture. We continued on our way to Mitchell, South Dakota, home of the World's Only Corn Palace!! Let's just say that it is a hole in the wall town, but it was kind of cool. We got some fun pictures with Corn-elius, their mascot, and some pictures of corn murals. Unfortunately, the outside of the building wasn't too pretty, but that's because they spend the summer planning and updating the building for the fall festivals. From there, we headed to our campground for the night. Nothing too exciting. I guess today was a somewhat laid-back day. It is now evening and we are waiting for the sunset to get some pictures looking west. Hopefully they'll be better than last night's attempt at lightning pictures!
Tomorrow, it's off to the Black Hills, to see the Presidents!
States Visited: Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, South Dakota, Wisconsin (9/50)
Provinces Visited: Ontario (1/10)
License Plates Seen: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming (45/50)
Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan (7/10)
Showing posts with label Minnesota. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Minnesota. Show all posts
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Friday, July 1, 2011
Day Seven: HOT! HOT! HOT!
I don't know how you guys in Texas and Arizona do it! It is 96 with a heat index of 104, but it feels much hotter than that. Apparently the people here are not used to this weather and they get kind of cranky! Oh, and the state of Minnesota shut down last night after not being able to come to a budget agreement, so the highways have all been left half done. Hopefully for their sake they will be able to come to an agreement.
Other than the weather, it has been fun! We were going to go to the zoo today, but that was one of the things that was closed because of the whole state thing, so we did the next best thing we could find which was the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. They have a bunch of neat pieces of "art" there, like the one called "Five Slabs and Two Poles" (they are really creative when it comes to names). The best one is definitely the "Spoonbridge and Cherry." That's a fun one with a water fountain shooting out of it. Then there was the kind of morbid one that had about 28 benches with really strange sayings engraved into the stone. Who knew that some of that stuff was art??
After that, we took a driving tour of the city. We saw the Metrodome where the Vikings play and Target Field where the Twins play, and the Target Center across the street from there where the basketball teams play. We also went back to the university to see it in the day. It is huge! I'm pretty sure that about 3 CCSUs could fit into it! I don't think I would want to be a Golden Gopher, though. Their mascot's name is Goldy. Not really intimidating... Finally on the city tour, we went to the Mill City Museum. They have all kinds of things about the city's history as a milling town. The Gold Medal Flour building is still there, too.
Then we spent the afternoon at Minehaha Falls. It's a city park so it wasn't shut down, which was good. We took a nice walk by the Minehaha Creek which flows into the Mississippi farther down. They were definitely no Niagara Falls, but a nice place to cool down a little, nonetheless.
Later in the day, we had some storms pass through. Tried to get some neat pictures of lightning, but couldn't quite get it. Did get some pretty sunset pictures though.
We liked Minneapolis, but tomorrow we will be off to the middle of nowhere in South Dakota and hopefully making it to Mt. Rushmore by Sunday.
States Visited: Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Wisconsin (7/50)
Provinces Visited: Ontario (1/10)
License Plates Seen: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming (45/50)
Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan (7/10)
Other than the weather, it has been fun! We were going to go to the zoo today, but that was one of the things that was closed because of the whole state thing, so we did the next best thing we could find which was the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. They have a bunch of neat pieces of "art" there, like the one called "Five Slabs and Two Poles" (they are really creative when it comes to names). The best one is definitely the "Spoonbridge and Cherry." That's a fun one with a water fountain shooting out of it. Then there was the kind of morbid one that had about 28 benches with really strange sayings engraved into the stone. Who knew that some of that stuff was art??
After that, we took a driving tour of the city. We saw the Metrodome where the Vikings play and Target Field where the Twins play, and the Target Center across the street from there where the basketball teams play. We also went back to the university to see it in the day. It is huge! I'm pretty sure that about 3 CCSUs could fit into it! I don't think I would want to be a Golden Gopher, though. Their mascot's name is Goldy. Not really intimidating... Finally on the city tour, we went to the Mill City Museum. They have all kinds of things about the city's history as a milling town. The Gold Medal Flour building is still there, too.
Then we spent the afternoon at Minehaha Falls. It's a city park so it wasn't shut down, which was good. We took a nice walk by the Minehaha Creek which flows into the Mississippi farther down. They were definitely no Niagara Falls, but a nice place to cool down a little, nonetheless.
Later in the day, we had some storms pass through. Tried to get some neat pictures of lightning, but couldn't quite get it. Did get some pretty sunset pictures though.
We liked Minneapolis, but tomorrow we will be off to the middle of nowhere in South Dakota and hopefully making it to Mt. Rushmore by Sunday.
States Visited: Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Wisconsin (7/50)
Provinces Visited: Ontario (1/10)
License Plates Seen: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming (45/50)
Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan (7/10)
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Day Six: The "Mini-Apple" is...
Before I go any farther, we would like to apologize in case the next few posts are difficult to read. The hotel we're staying in has Internet access, but it's a little sketchy to log on to the computer. So we are doing this from our phone, which is rather difficult. This is also why we haven't put up pictures in a few days.
After making a rather large list of things to do, places to visit last night, we came up with a plan for today. We got three of the places on our list done. We wanted to explore St. Paul first, since that seemed the most logical. Our first stop today was Rice Park. It's a tiny park, all of like a square mile wide, but it has a handful of Snoopy statues. Apparently, Charles M. Shultz was from St. Paul. We couldn't park because there was no close spots, but we got a few pictures of some of the statues, like Peppermint Patty kicking a ball and Marcy, reading on the park bench. Our second location was Summitt Avenue. This stretch of road is so neat. It is the longest continuous stretch of Victorian-age houses and buildings in the country. We didn't want to be super creepy and walk up and down the road, but that's apparently what they do. So we got pictures of a few of those. Probably the coolest, most architectually interesting is the St. Paul Cathedral, that anchors the road. Depending on where on the horizon you look, there are two buildings that can pass off as the state Capitol, and this is one of them. It is a huge building.
Anyway, from there, we headed west to the Mall of America. On the way to the mall, we passed the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport, so we were able to see all of the planes take off. This area is very commercial/industrial. They have the airport, a Delta hub (we're thinking), the mall, and the "Waterpark of America". Not quite as impressive as the mall itself. I have never seen anything that big before. There are four floors- three Bath & Body Works stores, two Victoria's Secret, and even entire stores for flip-flops & scrapbooking! There are even stores dedicated to the Mall itself, uniquely called "The Mall of America Store"! Unfortunately, none of the stores had very good postcards.
After that, we decided we'd go on an adventure through Uptown Minneapolis to find the Sculpture Garden. We parked the car (MUCH cheaper than Chicago!) and went on a hunt. We walked and walked, and couldn't find it. We reached the highway and decided to turn back. The walk was not much fun- it was close to 100 today, which wouldn't be so bad, but with all of the cars and road work, it made it much hotter. Anyway, we got back to the car and headed for the hotel, and found a bridgeway that we think might have led to the Garden. We got stuck in some traffic, threatened to throw Rhe out the window, then the co-pilot. After awhile, everyone made it back safely!
We got back to the hotel and took a break before going out on the town. We met up with a friend who worked at summer camp with Dawn, and spent a few hours talking. It was nice to catch up and reminisce. We also drove through the University of Minnesota campus and it is ginormous! We've added it to our list of places to visit tomorrow, when it's light out so we can wander and gawk at its immense size. Apparently their stadium is huge, but they can't get enough people there to fill it because they are not very good. So, that is where we are now. We just finished our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (Dad-style), and now it is time for bed. We are planning on seeing the sights we missed today, and adding a few more to the list. Until then!
States Visited: Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Wisconsin (7/50)
Provinces Visited: Ontario (1/10)
License Plates Seen: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming (45/50)
Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan (7/10)
After making a rather large list of things to do, places to visit last night, we came up with a plan for today. We got three of the places on our list done. We wanted to explore St. Paul first, since that seemed the most logical. Our first stop today was Rice Park. It's a tiny park, all of like a square mile wide, but it has a handful of Snoopy statues. Apparently, Charles M. Shultz was from St. Paul. We couldn't park because there was no close spots, but we got a few pictures of some of the statues, like Peppermint Patty kicking a ball and Marcy, reading on the park bench. Our second location was Summitt Avenue. This stretch of road is so neat. It is the longest continuous stretch of Victorian-age houses and buildings in the country. We didn't want to be super creepy and walk up and down the road, but that's apparently what they do. So we got pictures of a few of those. Probably the coolest, most architectually interesting is the St. Paul Cathedral, that anchors the road. Depending on where on the horizon you look, there are two buildings that can pass off as the state Capitol, and this is one of them. It is a huge building.
Anyway, from there, we headed west to the Mall of America. On the way to the mall, we passed the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport, so we were able to see all of the planes take off. This area is very commercial/industrial. They have the airport, a Delta hub (we're thinking), the mall, and the "Waterpark of America". Not quite as impressive as the mall itself. I have never seen anything that big before. There are four floors- three Bath & Body Works stores, two Victoria's Secret, and even entire stores for flip-flops & scrapbooking! There are even stores dedicated to the Mall itself, uniquely called "The Mall of America Store"! Unfortunately, none of the stores had very good postcards.
After that, we decided we'd go on an adventure through Uptown Minneapolis to find the Sculpture Garden. We parked the car (MUCH cheaper than Chicago!) and went on a hunt. We walked and walked, and couldn't find it. We reached the highway and decided to turn back. The walk was not much fun- it was close to 100 today, which wouldn't be so bad, but with all of the cars and road work, it made it much hotter. Anyway, we got back to the car and headed for the hotel, and found a bridgeway that we think might have led to the Garden. We got stuck in some traffic, threatened to throw Rhe out the window, then the co-pilot. After awhile, everyone made it back safely!
We got back to the hotel and took a break before going out on the town. We met up with a friend who worked at summer camp with Dawn, and spent a few hours talking. It was nice to catch up and reminisce. We also drove through the University of Minnesota campus and it is ginormous! We've added it to our list of places to visit tomorrow, when it's light out so we can wander and gawk at its immense size. Apparently their stadium is huge, but they can't get enough people there to fill it because they are not very good. So, that is where we are now. We just finished our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (Dad-style), and now it is time for bed. We are planning on seeing the sights we missed today, and adding a few more to the list. Until then!
States Visited: Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Wisconsin (7/50)
Provinces Visited: Ontario (1/10)
License Plates Seen: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming (45/50)
Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan (7/10)
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Day Five: Out of Chicagoland and Into Just Land
There hasn't been much to see on today's drive. As soon as we left the Chicago area, all there is is farm land. There are a lot of farms, but not really as many dairy farms as we would've thought in Wisconsin. Most of the farms look to be corn and wheat. We did see some "happy cows" (that's for you mom!) in the middle of nowhere, but that's about it. There were a few cool rock formations along the way, but not much more than that. They do have some fun names though, like Menomonie.
We looked through our "Best Road Trips" book and found a cute little place called the "Norske Nook" with AMAZING pies!! We each got a slice of pie (didn't have anything for lunch in order to save room for them) and still didn't finish all of it. That means we now have dinner too!! Yum!! (Yes, it deserves that many exclamation marks!!) And it was in a cute Norwegian town with all kinds of quilting places too. We also took a small detour that according to the book was supposed to have all kinds of large roadside attractions, but apparently they shrunk or something. We did see a large mouse in front of a "cheesehaus," a beaver or something like that, some whales jumping out of a pool, and a very angry looking bull. We have also seen some great water towers, like the one with the giant pumpkin, the one painted as a rose, and the one in Loves, Wisconsin with a heart on it.
The weather's been great. It has been sunny the whole time so far. Who would've thought that it got this warm up here? It's about 85 today and tomorrow is supposed to be hotter with heat indexes into the 100s. Can't wait to get to the real heat down in the South.
Oh, and Dawn started driving. I finally gave up the wheel to let her experience the open road. She's doing a great job by the way. This afternoon, we crossed over the Mississippi and into Minnesota. OMG! It was so cool!! The scope of our trip is getting to us. A-ma-zing! We did see a sign for a drive-through liquor store. I'm not sure how they can get away with that...
Anyway, we had planned on going to the Minneapolis Sculpture Graden today, but after all of the driving we did, we decided to find a place to spend the night and go tomorrow.
States Visited: Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Wisconsin (7/50)
Provinces Visited: Ontario (1/10)
License Plates Seen: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming (45/50)
Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec (5/10)
We looked through our "Best Road Trips" book and found a cute little place called the "Norske Nook" with AMAZING pies!! We each got a slice of pie (didn't have anything for lunch in order to save room for them) and still didn't finish all of it. That means we now have dinner too!! Yum!! (Yes, it deserves that many exclamation marks!!) And it was in a cute Norwegian town with all kinds of quilting places too. We also took a small detour that according to the book was supposed to have all kinds of large roadside attractions, but apparently they shrunk or something. We did see a large mouse in front of a "cheesehaus," a beaver or something like that, some whales jumping out of a pool, and a very angry looking bull. We have also seen some great water towers, like the one with the giant pumpkin, the one painted as a rose, and the one in Loves, Wisconsin with a heart on it.
The weather's been great. It has been sunny the whole time so far. Who would've thought that it got this warm up here? It's about 85 today and tomorrow is supposed to be hotter with heat indexes into the 100s. Can't wait to get to the real heat down in the South.
Oh, and Dawn started driving. I finally gave up the wheel to let her experience the open road. She's doing a great job by the way. This afternoon, we crossed over the Mississippi and into Minnesota. OMG! It was so cool!! The scope of our trip is getting to us. A-ma-zing! We did see a sign for a drive-through liquor store. I'm not sure how they can get away with that...
Anyway, we had planned on going to the Minneapolis Sculpture Graden today, but after all of the driving we did, we decided to find a place to spend the night and go tomorrow.
States Visited: Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Wisconsin (7/50)
Provinces Visited: Ontario (1/10)
License Plates Seen: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming (45/50)
Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec (5/10)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)