Pleasure Cruise part two

                Mississippi River Valley, Illinois.   Fall Color

Pleasure cruise part two.

 After Minnesota we travel down through Missouri to Arkansas to pick up passengers for another pleasure cruise.

 My mother Clara and her hubby Ron embark for a cruise up to Wisconsin and the northern woods to visit family and see the leaves change.

 We follow the Mississippi though forgotten towns and 

cornfields, stopping in places like Clarksville and dipping into Illinois to camp at deserted state parks.

 Vacationland this is not, RV parks are few and far between.

 The welcome in Wisconsin makes up for all, with Ron's son Shannon and lovely wife Cathy and his other son Eric showing us the great places to eat (all you can eat fried walleye.. yum!) Then Cathy proceeds to feed us to death with incredible meals of lamb (local farmer's) and the bounty of a rich farming community.

 Ron and I played a round of golf at Teal Lake, a course that would easily get hundreds of dollars a round  and a wait for a tee time in California, is walk-on here.  We had the course to ourselves (which was good, we nearly ran out of balls!)

 Very long, very narrow, BIG trees, lotsa water.   Fun.

 We then meandered across the top of Wisconsin touching Michigan and the great lakes, visiting the Great lakes visitor center and the Maritime museum before completing the circle back though Illinois and Missouri.

 The Fall is just happening, some of the trees are insanely colorful, mesmerizing us for mile upon mile.

 We will rest for a few days in Mountain Home, Arkansas and then...  

 Maybe we'll go see if Toto made it back to Kansas.

 It's a big country, with a big middle, the south is still reeling from hurricanes, the north is getting cold and the west coast beckons like a siren.

 And from there it's straight down to Mexico.

   

 

  

Minnesota nice

        Us at the falls,  what a great place!

Minnesota Nice

 

 After North Dakota we reentered civilization as we know it, staying at the Detroit Lakes RV camp. 

 Very nice, (especially after N.D.) It had a small lake with paddle-boats, lots of frogs and a cornfield that you could pick all you wanted.

 We were invited by our dear friends Joan and Dean Elwell to come to the Minneapolis area for a visit, so south we headed.

 We are so lucky to have such great friends, Joan and Dean and their (above average, of course) kids, Aiden and Katie made us right at home with a super-cool parking spot in their backyard.

 Once settled in with a heartfelt welcome, they toured us around the Minneapolis and St. Paul area for four days.

 What a GREAT place, there are museums, The Minnesota Institute of the Arts, The St Paul Landmark building to name two that we visited (along with others)

 Huge theaters like the Guthrie, where we sipped drinks in the ubermodern bar on the seventh floor.

 Wonderful restaurants like Nye's all oozing tons-o-history

 We literally ate and drank ourselves silly

 Joan is the manager of the Lakeshore Players theater so she treated us to a performance there, "Axel and his dog". We loved it.

 Then there were farmer's markets, apple farms, and more sightseeing.

 And we enjoyed killer martinis made with Prairie Vodka, a local distilled organic corn juice that when chilled is ambrosia.

 We LOVED Minnesota!

 Except for the roads, worst we have encountered yet, maybe it was our route, but very rough.

 Never did meet Al Franken, oh well, can't have everything, even in Minnesota.

North Dakota-- Just Kidding

              A picture is worth dozens of words, need we say more?

North Dakota, Just Kidding.

 It begins with badlands and, well, let's just say the road was nice and straight, filled with all kinds of interesting things like:

 The World's largest Holstein cow,

 The World's largest Sandhill Crane

 The World's largest Buffalo

 The ENCHANTED highway with the World's largest metal sculptures.

 I'm sure there are lots of great places in North Dakota, nice secret places that they keep all to themselves.

 North Dakota reminds me of a line out of a David Byrne movie, I'll paraphrase;

 God found it was easier instead of making all the world beautiful, just make some people that like it that way.

 North Dakota has a shrinking population.

 Even God throws an airball occasionally. 

 Next Minnesota, The land of Al Franken and Jesse Ventura!!!

Montana Dreams

Montana.

 Crossing back into the US under lowering clouds and rain, down the twisty two lane Hwy 89 to Great Falls, the Rockies on our right peeking out every now and then, slowly, the weather clears the terrain flattens and Montana becomes what it promises.

 Big Sky Country.

 We took lots of pictures of Montana, but none of them seem right, every vista is a hundred miles in all directions, the eye strains to see the land, but the sky dominates.

 Eventually all you see is a small strip of land at the bottom with blue weighing down like an overturned ocean.

 It's a long way anywhere, so the imagination sets in.

 Cumulus clouds line up like malevolent jellyfish, marching in rank.

 Every now and then one descends in a purple rage, lowering tentacles to the flat bottom, ensnaring those  deer and antelope playing on the range.

 We follow Lewis and Clark's trail eschewing the interstate for the two lane Hwy 87

 Right through the middle.

 We see bears in the foothills of the Rockies

 We race Pronghorn antelope (clocked one at forty miles an hour)

 The road becomes a giant roller coaster of gentle up and down with no turns.

 Abandoned homesteads, some with rotting sod-roofed buildings attest others imaginations as well.

 We take a wrong turn in the middle of nowhere and go forty miles out of our way, no problem, in fact good, otherwise we would have bypassed Winnit.

 It's Sunday, the church parking lot has seven cars in it, the bar has two.

 There are no paved streets except the one down the middle.

 Montana,  Big Dream Country

Oh Canada!

         View outside the brewpub in Canmore 

OH CANADA!

 

 After Idaho we left the country stage north.

Get out the passports and international certificate for small animals (kitty Ju Ju's passport) answer questions about intended destination (small fib cause WE don't really know, we picked Fairmont Hot Springs because Gwen's sister said it was nice, why not?) anyway with a "have a nice day" we were off.

  Canadians are very polite

  Unfortunately for us there was a nasty little stowaway in the guise of a cold virus on board, sniffles coming on, we did hole up for a few days at the Fairmont hotsprings.

 Located right up against huge craggy mountains (Canadian Rockies) we laid low and recuperated with the help of the soothing hot water in the HUGE pool.

 Traveling is super easy in Canada, all the ATMs work and of course everybody takes plastic, we changed a hundred bucks into Canadian dollars and still ended up with five of her majesties dollars when we dropped back down into the US.

 We then wandered up the west side of those crazy mountains, stopping every so often to gawk at the size and steepness of them.

 We decided to cross over them to get to the Lake Louise/Banff national park area, so low gears and a stiff climb up Hwy 1 through unbelievably scenic valleys mountains and forests brought us to the Lake Louise campground.

 The campground is located on the Bow river, a glacial outpouring of the area, the water is pale blue and incredibly cold. Hiking trails wander though mossy rain forests with fantasy mushroom gardens all over, I counted at least twenty different varieties (no, we didn't eat any).

 Next day the weather decided summer was over, a low dense fog descended, the temperature plummeted and there were reports of snow at lower elevations.

 OK, we can take a hint, besides we're wussies, down we go, stopping at Canmore because there was a billboard for a BREWPUB.

 The road down was rainy and foggy, not much to see, we were sure there were magnificent vistas all around us,  but oh well, you don't get to pick the weather, a nice tasty beer and lunch at the pub would put things to right.

 Boy did it.

 Great food and beer and when we stepped out it was like stepping into a fairytail.

 A hole in the clouds appeared revealing snow capped craggy peaks all around us, magic.

 We had toyed with the idea of making east in Canada all the way to Winipeg, but the weather looked crummy, south seemed a better choice, so south we went.

 We stayed on the smaller roads (Hwy 22) to a choice between crossing back over the mountains west or east for a little bit then down to Montana.

 So naturally, we did both.

 This led us to the incomparable spot called Crowsnest Pass and one of Canada's 

most famous sights, Frank Slide.

 Frank was a small mining town that was questionably located under a monstrous loose rock of purest limestone, gravity, being poorly understood back then, did what gravity does.

 It dropped the rock right on them, square miles of huge boulders came down and buried the town and covered the mine, people in houses were crushed, but weirdly the miners just dug themselves out.

 Seeing that there was no way the town could be rebuilt on that pile of boulders, everyone moved to Crowsnest pass and opened souvenir stands. 

 Who said Canadians were boring? I love em.

 Well anyway, here we say goodbye to our dear neighbors in the great white north.

 Next, Montana, Big Sky-In -Your- Eye!

  

 

   

Idaho!

                      South fork of the Clearwater River, Idaho

Idaho!

 First, into Boise to visit an old friend that we hadn't seen in over 18 years.

 Michelle was our neighbor in Shell Beach when we were young business owners 

 (The Paperback Shack).

 She and Gwen had kept contact all this time.

 She and her husband Terry procured a level spot right next to their home, and graciously showed us some of the sights around town.

 Boise is obviously a very nice place to live, with a university, museums and all the cultural trappings that go along with that.

 After a few days and several thousand words catching up, we headed straight north to see the "Panhandle"

 Often following the Lewis and Clark trail, we tried to avoid the big highways.

 Highway 13 along the Clearwater river is wonderful, we found easy camping along the water, waterfalls, mountains, rolling fields of wheat with picturesque farms.

 Almost every one of them sporting a perfect red barn.

 Our last stop was at Sandpoint Idaho

 Located on the shores of Lake Pend Oreille, Sandpoint is kind of an over-the-top

tourist area, there are ski resorts a few miles away at Schweitzer Mountain The lake boasts a yacht/ sailing club, we watched a regatta from the pristine city beach then took the BMW (our dingy) for a ride to the ski resort for a microbrew/ music festival

 (Our favorite was the "Rocket Dog IPA" brewed in Sandpoint)

 Then it started hailing on us.

 Not the most comfortable thing for motorcycling so "down the hatch" fast and down the mountain too.

 The weather was still holding pretty nice most of the time, so North we go, across the border into...

 CANADA.