Homeward Bound (Grand Forks ND Trip, Day 6)

After an early morning appointment to look at window shades for RVs, we head toward Cleveland.  I drive while Mike catches up on e-mails and makes phone calls.  We stop in Toledo to see Mike’s 96-year-old uncle who just moved into assisted living. We have lunch with a cousin and his wife.  Then, we push on, arriving back at the office in Willoughby around 4:00pm.

This trip was a lot of driving, but we made some good business contacts, caught up with friends and family, and discovered more of this big, wonderful country.

Whistling Gophers (Grand Forks ND Trip, Day 5)

This is a heavy driving day. I drive the first leg, while Mike works on his computer and makes phone calls. We enjoy Sirius Radio news, political and music stations. For lunch, we stop at a travel plaza and get iced tea and cookies to supplement our sandwiches in the RV.

We keep on to Elkhart, Indiana, where we have a beer with a young salesman from the company that is molding some plastic parts for Advanced RV’s motor homes. He told us that he understands the appeal of designing and manufacturing motor homes; as a kid, he loved making forts and designing spots for all his favorite things. Who doesn’t love making forts? He also told us about a friend of his in RV sales. After a recent RV show, he asked the guy, “Did you sell any RVs? He said, ‘No, just a bunch of whistling gophers. They ask What does this go-for? When you tell them, they just whistle.’”

After the beer, Mike and I stay on to have a light dinner. We camp at the Elkhart Campground, a burned-out flat grassland that’s nothing much to speak of. But, it is five minutes from our 7:15am appointment the next morning. It’s still 100 degree this evening, so we make a quick walk around the campground to see all the RVs before retreating to our motor home with the air conditioner blasting.

Mississippi Headwaters (Grand Forks ND Trip, Day 4)

We start the day with a yoga class led by our friend at the local fitness club, before breakfast at the downtown artisan bakery, Dakota Harvest Bakers. We decide to take Route 2 East across Minnesota to go see the headwaters of the Mississippi at Lake Itasca State Park. 

The park has a welcoming stone visitor center, with a wooded path down to the lake where a tumbling, clear 15-foot-wide brook flows out of the lake to create a small stream flowing North, before it turns South building to become the great Mississippi.  We take our turn with a bunch of kids, walking across a log at the headwaters. 

Then, we drive the 17-mile Wilderness Drive and Bike Route around the park, stopping to examine a giant 300+ year old white pine, 112’ tall and 178” in circumference. Next time we stop here, we’ll bike the route instead of driving it.

Continuing on Route 2 East across Minnesota, we descend toward Duluth, enjoying stunning views of the blue waters of Duluth Harbor and Lake Superior. From there, we take Route 53 South to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and then I-94 for about 30 miles to the KOA at Hixton. This is a peaceful campground with large pines and beautiful gardens and landscaping.  In the bathroom, there are vases of fresh daisies and Black-Eyed Susan. At our site’s picnic table, we eat salad and the leftovers from last night, and work on our computers, connected by Wi-Fi, until almost dark.

Mixing Business and Pleasure (Grand Forks ND Trip, Day 3)

In the camp restroom this morning, I chat with a woman who is traveling with her husband in their motor home. They are going to Alaska this summer, but have to be back home to Canada (across the lake from Sandusky, Ohio) in August for the tomato harvest; the husband hauls tomatoes for a living.

We push on to Moorhead, Minnesota, where Mike meets with customers, and then to Crookston, Minnesota where we stop for sandwiches in a city park. While Mike meets with more customers, I hang out in the motor home, catching up on e-mails and my journal. It’s 90 degrees out, but there’s a breeze and I am comfortable with the camper windows down.

Late in the afternoon, we meet friends in Grand Forks, North Dakota at their new home, built on a lot where the former house was destroyed in the Red River flood of 1997. Their new house faces a dike about 50 feet high, with a running path and the river on the other side. We go out to dinner with them in downtown Grand Forks and settle in for the night at nearby Grand Forks Campground.

Lake Wobegon Trail (Grand Forks ND Trip, Day 2)

Today we push on across Wisconsin into Minnesota, through lush farmland under perfect driving conditions: 70 degrees, blue skies, and a good road (I-94). For lunch, we find a good rest stop with a shaded picnic table.

Marcia leading the way on a
Minnesota Rails to Trail bike ride

Just west of St. Cloud, at Avon, we pull off to bike a piece of the Lake Wobegon Trail, a rails-to-trails biking and walking trail.  At the trailhead, we meet a couple on recumbent bikes, who recommend we drive to Holdingford, about 10 miles North (where there is a covered bridge) and pedal about 7 miles to Bowlus for dinner at Jordie’s Trail Side Café. 

We take the couple’s advice and drive to Holdingford. Late on this perfect summer day, we ride through forests, wetlands and farmland on well-graded asphalt and over wooden bridges.  At Jordie’s, in a former hotel across from the train station, we eat good barbequed ribs, sitting at a wooden glider with a table and canopy, set in the owner’s garden.

It is after 9:00pm but still light when we pull into Prairie Cove Campground in Ashby, Minnesota, halfway between Minneapolis and Fargo on Route 94.  The campground, on a rise overlooking two lakes and a cornfield, is clean and well-maintained, but only half full.  Sadly, the couple who owns it expect this might be their last year in business.

Running Away (Grand Forks ND Trip, Day 1)

At 8:15 am, Mike and I set out from our home in Willoughby Hills, Ohio, for a “running away” trip in our 2009 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter Class B motor home. We are heading to Grand Forks, North Dakota—1,100 miles away.

Running away in our camper is a chance to simplify. Before getting underway, I packed a few rugged, comfortable clothes that don’t show road or camping grime, stowed in nylon sacks tucked into the upper rear cabinets. For his clothes, Mike prefers hard, rectangular bins that just fit in the cabinets. Jackets and better shirts for “dressing up,” if we must, easily hang in the closet.

For food, I picked lettuce and snap peas from our garden, hard-boiled some eggs, cooked some bacon, and roast beets for salads. Yesterday, at the West Side Market, we bought cheeses and Mexican roasted pork loin for salad toppers and sandwiches. I also made a barley, mushroom and greens stew with produce from our CSA farm share. All of this fits easily into our RV’s large fridge and freezer.

We also brought our bikes, packed behind the couch inside the motor home; we’re hoping to have time in Minnesota to try more of the bike trails we enjoyed there last year.

Once underway, we start figuring out how far we might get this first day. We call old friends in Milwaukee, and they invite us to stop for dinner. Now we have a destination to happily anticipate. Mike does most of the driving, as he usually does, but I drive for two hours while he catches up on emails.  Our friends in Milwaukee, we learn, are moving to a family cabin on a lake north of Montreal. They are considering getting a motor home, thinking it will be the perfect way to travel in their new life.

After dinner in Milwaukee, we push on for a few hours, ending up at a KOA campground in De Forest, Wisconsin, just East of Madison. We usually don’t stay at KOAs, preferring less-developed campgrounds, but this one is right off the highway. It is also clean, well-maintained, and the staff is friendly. We walk around the campground, nod at people sitting around their large RVs, and laugh about how small our motor home looks in comparison. Families with kids are gathered around campfires or catching the last few minutes of daylight on the playground.