Minnesota Mines and Cleveland

Today we traveled up to Chisholm, Minnesota, about 35 miles northeast of where we are camping. Minnesota Museum of Mining is located there, dedicated to the mining industry of Minnesota. For a small town they are keeping a great museum in place by documentating and displaying their history. Dedicated to the miners of iron ore, explained how iron ore was mined above ground as well as below ground, how it was gathered, processed and shipped to waiting steel mills on the Great Lakes. It also documented life in Minnesota, all the different ethnic people and how they lived. The Vermilion, Mesabi and Cuyuna iron ranges are the largest deposits of iron ore in the world. And the connection to Cleveland. LTV Steel (my former employer) owned a number of mines in this area, having it shipped through Duluth's harbor into Cleveland. I can only shudder when I remember the Edmund Fitzgerald, the iron ore tanker, that sank at Whitefish Point in the Upper Peninsula in 1975, loaded with iron ore from the mines heading to Cleveland. Another reference to home - we are camping right near the Mesabi Range and next week we are heading more north east and will be right near the Vermilion Range. How cool is that? Touring the museum was fun. With the big equipment and machines on display, well worth our time.

Fun facts that we have discovered....... The Mesabi Trail is a rail-to-trail 130 miles of biking fun for those enthusiasts. It starts in Grand Rapids and moves north east all the way to Ely. It was once a railroad line for the movement of iron ore. It connects the Mississippi River to the Boundary Waters of the upper North East. Another fact....we crossed over the Mississippi River this morning - not at all the raging wide body you see say in St. Louis. Just a small creek, only about 30 feet wide, very very shallow. The Mississippi River in this part of the country is called the Upper Mississippi where many lakes and small creeks make up the beginnings of the River we know which is 2,320 miles long and is the largest river in North America. We are about 4 miles from Lake Itasca where the Mississippi is formed and begins its flow south.

I had tried to get us a campground in Two Harbors, Minnesota, located about 20 miles north of Duluth on Lake Superior. All booked. I found out today the 3M company started there. You know the company - Post-it-notes, sandpaper, Scotch cellophane tape, Scotch-Brite cleaning supplies, printers, fax machines, medical and dental products, etc. Evenutally it moved to Duluth, then to St. Paul. Certainly has made my life easier. Ah-hah.

As we approached the entrance to the Museum, we noticed that the visitor center looked like a castle. We found out that it was built to represent the symbol of the Army Corps of Engineers, the oldest and largest engineering organization in the United States. During the 1930s when there was no work the City got a huge grant from the government to help develop the town and make jobs and the Corps was instrumental in building up the town - this building, a massive stone fence around the town, sports complex, buildings for the workers, civic buildings and more.

Did you know that Greyhound Bus Line started in the town of Hibbing which is next door to Chisholm? Started out by two guys who started a quick shuttle of miners back and forth between mines and their homes and it became a hit and so did the company. And the last fun fact - and now the WOW factor - while we were visiting the Museum of Mining in Chisholm, the hostess was adamant in telling us that the movie "Field of Dreams" which starred Kevin Costner, was based on the Chisholm's own Doctor Graham. This Archibald "Moonlight" Graham played for the New York Giants in 1922 but never came up to bat. Instead, he gave up baseball and returned to Chisholm and practiced medicine for the next 40 years.

Grand Rapids, Minnesota

We moved this morning from Grand Casino in Hinkley, traveling 137 miles more north to Prairie Lake Campground in Grand Rapids - the home of Judy Garland. Our timing was good because as we drove through the town a festival was going on - Tall Timber Days - and less than an hour the roads in town would have been closed due to a parade. We traveled through the Fond Du Lacs Indian Nation lands and we know we are in the 'North Country'. Desolate, pines, very raw and wild. We still haven't had the 'wow' factor that the upper peninsula of Michigan gave us. Maybe this week we will see it. Much to see and do here, we will be staying until next Sunday when we move again more north but east - but this time we are going to another Indian Casino - in Ely (where Mukluks were first introduced and are still made there) called Fortune Bay Casino, run by the Chippewa Indians.

We are now camping at the most northern spot in the US since we started this trek. Day time temps are low 70s and nights in the 50s (yeah!!!). We are hoping that we get to see the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) from the recent solar flare up and also start hearing wolves like we did in the UP Michigan last year. We need to stay put for a bit, Chip got pretty sick again and we think he got food poisoned, I didn't clean out his dish the day we went to Duluth it was pretty warm and I think he ate whatever food was left over. He's better, not 100%, but better. And Grace managed to scrape her eye, so she's a one-eye Pete. Our kids!!! wow.

RV life at a Casino and Duluth

We moved from Ham Lake yesterday to Hinkley, Minnesota. About 60 miles more north. We wanted to find the police department in order to get a badge or business card for our nephew who works for Hinkley OH police department. No such luck. This town is on Ojibwa lands and they do not have a police department/fire department like any other town/city - they have tribal security forces. Trying to find the town on Mapquest shows empty fields - we are sure on purpose. We are on Indian Nation land and what ever they want to do, it's fine. They are not governed by US laws since they are a separate nation. We are at Grand Casino, a Mille Lacs Band and Ojibwa tribe casino. There are 16 similar casinos in Minnesota - a consortium of 500 tribal groups. However, this is the only campground inside a casino. Wish there were more of casino campgrounds - we would definitely camp there, it's much cheaper, cleaner, well laid out, all the amenities you need! Found out we are camping at the #1 rated campground in Minnesota. It is lovely here and can understand the rating. We decided to eat at the casino last night, checked out the buffet but was recommended to eat at the better restaurant - the Winds. Fantastic! We sat down to dinner at 5pm and by the time we left which was about 7pm, the casino was packed! And so was the RV park. The only complaint I have - a shuttle bus drives around the complex 24/7 - every 20 minutes - to pick up and drop off people for the casino. During the night, if you are a light sleeper, you hear the shuttle moving around.

This morning we decided to drive into Duluth located on Lake Superior. Wow, talk about timing! Tomorrow marks the anniversary (8-7-1789) of George Washington signing into law the federalizing of the nation's lighthouses and tomorrow starts Light House Days in Duluth. We got into town about 9am, walked around, saw two freighters coming and going through the harbor, walked the harbor walk, walked out to the lighthouse, saw the lift bridge and then drove down to Canal Park, toured the US Corp of Engineer museum/visitor's center and by 1:30pm we had enough - and a thunderstorm was coming. There were no parking spots left, gazillion people walking around, busy, busy! Duluth is a very people-friendly town. A huge harbor for shipping, they have developed the waterfront with shops, restaurants, entertainment, alot of family-friendly activities. They say the winters in Duluth aren't necessarily snowy, just bitter cold - 0 to -30 for the month of January. Now that's cold. And - we found out this casino campground is open all year! Can you imagine camping in 30 below temps? Brr. Can you hear me complaining all the way to Ohio about how cold I am?

Finally found a campground!

You would think that being a full-time camper with lots of resources and memberships for nationwide camping discount parks at our fingertips would be easy to find a campground. Not so. I start looking for our next stop the first day of sitting down here on Monday. I have searched, called, sent emails, and just got very stressed to find our next home. Our intent is to move farther north - try to get as close to International Falls on the border of Canada as we could. No luck. We found out that a number Winter Texans are up here for the summer and then they return to where ever in Texas starting in September. Easy ride for them - straight up and down Interstate 35 which goes from Duluth to San Antonio. How perfect is that? These folks have locked up many campgrounds. Doesn't leave alot left for us transients. We even met a woman who waited on us in McAllen, Texas last winter - she works 6 months in the Camping World in Minneapolis and 6 months in the Camping World in McAllen. Small world. Finally secured our next two sites and tomorrow we are moving about 75 miles north to an Ojibwa casino for the weekend. Then on Sunday we move to Grand Rapids (no, not Michigan) which is about another 120 miles further northeast for about 12 days. We will use that base to see International Falls, Duluth, 3M company, Lake Superior lighthouses and what ever else is interesting, mining and fur trading history stuff.

The campground we are currently staying at is a bit strange. There is a 'Noah's Ark' area right across from the dirt roadway that has animals. Wooly sheep, lots of goats, roosters and chickens, llama, geese, horse, 2 ostrichs, lots of birds and who knows what else. Children love it. Our cats love it - they constantly stare out the window at the goings-on. I think Chip was flabergasted when he saw the ostrich for the first time - never took his eyes off it for minutes. And there is a huge lake (Ham Lake) right at the end of our campground. On the other side of us is a man-made pond and every day two Sand Hill Cranes come and visit. Dave is desperately trying to get pictures of them before we go. These are big birds - a bit smaller than the Whooping Cranes we saw last winter in Texas. Also, we hear the loons calling and I really want to see them when we get farther north.

Mall of America - Minnesota

The morning started out rough - we had 60 mile an hour winds and a nasty storm batter the RV about 8:30am. It rained until we left about noon to go to the mall. The temp was pleasant - about 75 so we left the windows open and no a/c on. Poor cats - when we got back at 5pm - it was 94 and so sunny and hot/humid. So - on the a/c went and it is still on as I type this. When will this awful hot stuff end?

For those people who like to go to malls and shop - this is the place for you - Mall of America in Minneapolis. Unbelievable. Built in a square, it is numbered sequentially by unit number and by direction (E135 for example - which mean this store is on the lower level in the east quadrant of the mall). Three sometimes four levels of stores and restaurants and more stores. Kiosks abundant through out. At times it was kinda hard to walk around - you dodge and weave around these kiosks and then all the people! We walked most of the three main levels and saw only 2 stores that were vacant. Some stores had multiple sights - just in case you missed the first one, have another opportunity. In the middle of the mall is an amusement park with rides. Some where as wild as you get at Cedar Point, some where kiddie size. And the people!!!!! It was a work day, school is not in session, and there had to be hundreds of thousands of people shopping, eating, playing. Glad I saw it - Dave has been there before, and now I don't ever have to go back. Mashu-mashu (Hebrew for UNBELIEVABLE!!). I did go into Macy's for some quick replacement shopping (underwear) and Dave went browsing at Best Buy. In total, between buying something to eat and what I purchased, we spent less than $100 today. Which in itself is truly amazing since there was some pretty neat enticements that I walked away from.

I have to say this mall is not a place to watch people - there were very few places to sit. However, to have a kid's birthday party inside in the amusement area - wonderful! I was most impressed with the LEGO store - some pretty cool things hanging outside that were made from those little blocks and about 5 feet in diameter. The most active store I saw was Apple and right across the way was MicroSoft. Apple was bombed with people, MicroSoft was so-so. Does that tell you what is HOT? Those little Itouchs/Ipads/Ipods/etc. are flying off the shelves.

Another observation was the kind of people we saw - predominately Swede / Norwegian / Scandanavian. Blonde, blue eyed, lots of very tall people. Very few dark haired people. And very few Asians. Interesting day.

Wisconsin and Ham Lake, MN

We drove from LaPorte, Indiana yesterday morning, driving 268 miles, through Chicago on a Sunday morning. We were not going to drive into the city - were going to take I80 west and pick up I39 north about 50 miles west of Chicago - but. I80 had construction and detours - so we drove through the heart of Chicago - surprisingly without a problem! Too, too much traffic for us. Regardless, made it through the Windy City by 10am and headed up into Wisconsin. By 2pm we were at the Wisconsin Dells, and settling into the camp sight. It was 97 when we pulled in and with that said, I think Dave had heat exhaustion by the time he hooked up electric, water and cleaned the bugs off the nose of the unit and the front of the truck. He was pretty wasted the rest of the afternoon and never recovered fully until this morning. As a friend of mine (Count) used to say, and Dave didn't do, '"push the water"'. Thank goodness we had 50 amp service to run the a/c and it never shut off until about 3am this morning. Definitely made our night a noisy night (the a/c unit sits on top of the roof in the living room area).

This morning - up by 5am (they do not have daylight saving here) the birds were singing and it was very light out. Did I mention that it is dark here by 8:15pm? Got our showers, had breakfast, and by 8:45 we had pulled out of Fox Hill Campground. Today's drive was less than the other 2 - only (!!) 240 miles. Made good time but when we got near St. Paul, Minnesota, we could see lightning and a storm was building. Minneapolis/St. Paul had record highs yesterday and this storm which is still going on after 2 hours here, is supposed to break the hot spell. We weren't so lucky with the weather - within 45 minutes prior to our arrival time we came full force into the storm. Not fun at all driving and trying to figure out where you are going. The campground (Ham Lake Campground) is about 30 miles north of Minneapolis. Nice place - but they didn't have full-hookup which was promised to us when we made the reservations. We will only stay till this Friday then head north. Not sure yet if we will head towards Thunder Bay or go directly north to International Falls.

Finally Headed Out!

We made our final to-do list this past week and this morning we headed out on the road. This time it is way different. In the past we had to be back home due to a commitment. Now, we have no plans other than to enjoy ourselves, see lots of things, and avoid snow as much as possible. We left Pier-Lon Campground in Medina, OH by 9am, got onto the Ohio Turnpike (I80/90) and headed west. Our first stop after driving 5 hours (256 miles) is La Porte, Indiana. And, our first encounter with a truly mean person. After we finally got settled into our spot, Dave and I remarked that the owner (Tom) reminded us of someone from back home. Just a mean spirited person! Wow! Made us loose our cool within 1 minute of talking with him.

Our tentative plans (at least for the next 2 months) are to head up into Minnesota, head west into North Dakota, then south to South Dakota, swing over west a tidge into Wyoming and catch up with friends who are also full-timers, then head south from there into Colorado to Fort Collins to meet up with our niece and her new baby girl and visit with her son Cody. Then? Who knows. That should take us through September and by then we need to get serious about heading south to avoid the snows. Sounds like we have our plate full and it's only day one! We are loving it!