Minnesota - Day 1 - . . . to Minnesota

Albert Lea/Austin KOA, Hayward

Thursday, 1 September 2022

Because Google's estimate of driving time for today's trip was even longer than for yesterday's (5 hours 49 minutes for today), I left a little earlier than yesterday (6:20).

today's drive

The town of Murdo had a sign saying it was the "Hometown of US Senator John Thune."

A bird that I think might have been a dove flew too close to the front of the RV and I think ran into the problem of a change in air flow that close to the windshield.  At any rate, it splatted right into the windshield, which hasn't happened to me before and was extremely upsetting.

Yesterday I thought I'd be moving from Mountain Time to Central Time and changed my clocks at the beginning of the day.  Except it turned out that the time zone line was just on the east side of the last night's campground, so I'd been off all day.  Then today I forgot to change my clocks (I'd been mentally primed for it yesterday and relaxed after I'd remembered - it just happened to be the wrong day) and went all day on the wrong time.  So it was actually 7:20 when I left the campground this morning, not 6:20.  I'd've left earlier if I'd remembered.

I passed fields of maize, corn, sunflowers, cows, and Christmas trees.

I went through a road construction zone where we were down to 1 lane for a full 8 miles - with no sign at all of any equipment or construction work or even personnel.  

We were passed by 2 vans labeled "Backroads," which they say online is "the world's #1 active travel company."  Each van was carrying 10 bicycles on its roof; don't know if there were 10 people in each van or a bunch more bicycles.

I stopped at a rest area and was pleased to see it was the one with the Dignity statue.  I took a bunch of photos of her last year - they're in my Day 12 post for South Dakota - because I was so taken with her.  To me she's absolutely beautiful and the statue is stunning.

In multiple stock tanks we passed, half the herd of cows was belly deep in water.

The "check engine" light still hasn't come back on.  I guess those 4000 RPMs finally did it.

I passed the exit for Mitchell, with the World's Only Corn Palace.

After we left a rest area halfway along the drive, twice I saw stock tanks with cows only ankle-deep in a puddle.  It's apparently a whole lot drier on this side of South Dakota than on the other.

Sioux Falls, on the far eastern side of the state, has a sign saying "Home of US Senator John Thune."  That seemed odd with Murdo saying the same thing so I checked with Wikipedia, which says he was born in Pierre, his family lived in both Mitchell and Murdo when he was young, and he and his wife now live in Sioux Falls.  Everybody wants to claim him.  I guess he must be popular here, because I don't remember that much enthusiasm for the 2 senators from Texas.

Minnesota - my 42nd state

There was a Welcome to Minnesota sign - though it didn't say the "welcome to" part - it was an outline of the state with "Minnesota" written on it.  But I'd decided to stop at the rest stop and couldn't get close enough to the sign to take a photo of it.  I made the stop because they said there'd be tourist information there, but all I found was an official state map and a whole bunch of brochures about hiking and biking and traveling by train and just about everything except camping.  Plus even more brochures for various areas of the state.  But I've learned from experience that those are almost never helpful to me.  So I took the map and left.

At the very next exit, a sign told me to turn for the Pipestone National Monument, which I'd never heard of.  It's an area where for 3,000 years people of many tribes quarried pipestone, used (surprise) for making ceremonial pipes.  The quarries are sacred to many tribes.  I'll try to get back to the area before I leave the state.

At another exit was the turn for Blue Mounds State Park.  This area protects a herd of bison that grazes on one of the last remnants in Minnesota of original prairie.  The name comes from a pink quartz bedrock here and, yes, pink isn't blue, but apparently early settlers thought it looked blue from a distance which is where the name came from.

Straddling the state border, in an apparent interstate cooperative agreement, those of us on the highway endured about 25 miles straight of road construction.  It got really old after a while.

I saw large farms and large wind farms.

I saw several establishments that I think were chicken farms.

The good thing about this route was that I had NPR most of the day.  NPR stations were had to find once I'd left western Montana.

A sign reminded me that Austin, MN, was home to a SPAM museum, which I have to visit (being one of those who actually likes Spam).

Today I made it into our campsite by 3:50.  Somehow I managed to do the longer trip faster today than yesterday's.  Just glad to have that done.  Now I'm going to settle in here until after Labor Day, except for a trip to Austin of course - can't miss that museum.