Lanesboro & the Root River, MN

We left St. Paul on Sunday June 29, headed towards Lanesboro on the Root River. Bob had met a couple in Guatemala who spent their summers in Lanesboro and invited us to camp on their property. Bob had been trying to communicate with them by e-mail without success, forgetting that he had been using his Yahoo account in Canada. We headed down the Mississippi River, stopping at Frontenac State Park on Lake Pepin. We stopped to take a 2.7 mile hike along the top of the bluffs and down at riverside in an area that was famous with explorers for these bluffs. The rock formation at left was very important to the Native Americans in the area. In Winona we stopped to let Bob play 18 holes of disc golf while I caught up with family via telephone (including a talk with Beren in the hospital where he was recovering from surgery to repair a broken hip).

In Lanesboro we camped at the city park which was within walking distance of everything in Lanesboro. The first night a huge Monaco Coach parked next to us. The next night Roxie from the Twin Cities drove up in a Cadillac Escalade in which she sleeps and camps. She was getting a respite from caring for her husband who had acute kidney failure. She had the most amazing quantity of plastic boxes filled with things to camp (table, chairs, little fire pit, lights, etc.)

The first full day in Lanesboro we rented a 16' canoe and paddled down the Root River for 16 miles. The rental place drove us to the put in point after caravaning our cars to the take-out point. The Root River is really beautiful, good current, bluffs, cold water, and we saw two leatherback turtles. We paddled along, stopped twice to swim and eat lunch and after about four hours made it to the take-out point.

Lanesboro is the home of the Commonweal Theater, a regional professional theater. We got tickets for the Man of La Mancha Monday night. It was quite a good production. This is a musical and most of the voices were pretty good. The accompanyist, a pianist, was also an actor and there was the occasional accordion and percussion created with tin cups and plates.

On Tuesday we rented a CD for a self-guided tour of the Amish country near Harmony, which is just south of Lanesboro. The CD explained some things about Amish traditions and guided us to various farm stands and places were quilts, baskets, canned goods and other things were sold. I was initially annoyed at the fact that it was so focused on selling things, but it finally occurred to me that the only way the English (what the Amish refer to outsiders as) could come into a farm yard is if they are invited through the offers of things to buy. We bought some amazing baskets (which seem to be the specialties here), a large bunch of asparagus for $1, a beautiful head of broccoli for 75 cents, and some dill pickles. It was really quite interesting. At one farm a young man was cultivating the corn field with three large draft horses. The Amish plant their corn wider so that the horses can walk between the rows.

In the afternoon we went to Mystery Cave, a state park with the longest cave in Minnesota. There was a great tour which we went on with one other family with some very interested kids. This area is all limestone and in the area of the cave the Root River goes underground, through a terminal sink and flows through the rock to emerge at a place called Seven Springs.
As a result, the cave is very live with water. There are quite a few fossils in the cave of the predecessors of squids and beautiful ponds which are so clear they look only a few feet deep, when in fact they are 10' deep. When the river floods, or there is heavy rain upstream, the cave fills up. It did so only about 2 weeks before we were there. The floods were more severe than those in 2002. The formations are created by the water seeping through the limestone. Each time it floods, the floods erode some of the formations. We took the short one hour tour (though it actually lasted 1 1/2 hours). There are longer tours on the weekends and wild cave tours lasting 4 1/2 hours where you are outfitted with knee and elbow pads and helmets and LED head lamps (which have replace carbide lamps) to go into areas of the cave not on the tours. They are still mapping the cave.

We had intended to go out to dinner, but the restaurant was closed, so we bought a sirloin steak and BBQ'd it and had new potatoes and asparagus. Yummy! The next morning we went to the Pastry Shoppe, recommended by the guy in the Monaco Motor Coach. You go in and when you ask for a menu they tell you they have all the usual breakfast stuff and you just put together what you want. We ordered scrambled eggs (Bob runny, me well-done) and they came exactly as ordered. They were accompanied by delicious Danishes and caramel rolls. It's a definite must go and very inexpensive.

We hope to return to Lanesboro and can highly recommend it for people who like to bike (the 60 mile Root River trail), canoe or walk.
The other two photos are of the Root River and Darwin and I in the canoe (me sporting my dorky hat which does keep the sun off may face and neck.

James Hill & Summit Ave.

The reason we traveled relatively quickly across the Great Plains was that Bob wanted to compete in a disc golf tournament in St. Paul. On the day of the tournament, I dropped him off about 8 a.m. and Darwin and I headed into St. Paul. Because it was so early in the morning, none of the museums were open. To while away the time, we walked four about four miles along the Mississippi River. There were walkers and bikers and the view was sometimes pretty and sometimes reflected decaying industrial buildings. When 10 a.m. rolled around, I left Darwin in the back of the car in the parking structure and walked up the hill near St. Paul's Cathedral to Summit Avenue and the James Hill House and bought tickets for the house tour and an architectural tour of Summit Ave. I walked over to St. Paul's Cathedral to await the architectural tour. When I came out it was pouring rain and the tour was cancelled. Instead, I went on the James Hill house tour.

James Hill, born in Guelph, Ontario, came to St. Paul to work as a "mudder," unloading the barges that traveled up the Mississippi River to the falls in Minneapolis, where they had to be unloaded. He was careful with his money and with some backers began a transportation business. As a bachelor, he ate all his meals in a particular hotel where he met an Irish waitress, whom he married. She was a good Catholic and they had 10 children.

Hill and some different backers eventually purchased the almost bankrupt Northern Pacific RR and started to build it west into Canada. The Canadian government refused to let him continue into Canada, so he was forced to go west through Montana, eventually finding the lowest pass through the Rockies at the same place we drove through. The Northern Pacific and Hill were also trying to build railroads into southern BC, which caused Canadian companies to beat him at his game and construct the railroad that went through the Othello Quintette tunnels. Hill succeeded partly because he was a hands-on manager and was out supervising the actual construction of the railroad.

Ultimately he built the house, the back of a portion of which is shown in the top photo. The house is 36,000 square feet and was constructed between
1888 and 1891 and had all sorts of conveniences such as central heating, electric lights, etc. It was designed by a Boston firm and the central heating is still used (though the coal-fired boilers have been replaced with natural gas). The house includes an art room with a glass ceiling below which is hung a frame covered with fabric to protect the art from too much sun or to let additional sun in. That room also has a 1,600 rank organ (which was played by a volunteer organist since it was Saturday). The main hall alone is 2,000 square feet. The dining room ceiling is covered in gold leaf and had leather embossed "wallpaper" on the walls. It was actually not all that gaudy.

Hill, who knew to the penny how much he spent on the house, did not have a will (i.e. he died intestate). He died in 1916 and his wife continued to live in the house until her death in 1921. She also died intestate (no one knows why they didn't have wills given their emphasis on details elsewhere in their lives). After her death the kids tried to sell the house unsuccessfully and ultimately gave it to the Catholic Church which used it as a place to train nuns to teach in the parochial schools.

Eventually the Catholic Church got tired of the building and it was given to the Minnesota Historical Society. After the house tour, lunch at Cafe Latte, I returned to Summit Ave. too late for the tour. However, as I parked, I saw the group heading off down the street and Darwin and I joined in. Summit Ave, five miles in length, with the exception of about 40-60 houses, consists of original houses in various styles built between about 1855 and 1920. The docent-led tour was very informative. Summit Avenue, until about 15 years ago was a very run down area of town with a high crime rate and lousy schools. Many of these houses had been turned into apartments and the Catholic Church owned a whole bunch (which is probably what saved the neighborhood). A few brave urban pioneers began to buy up the houses dirt cheap and rehabilitate them. The other three photos are of some of the wonderful houses on Summit Avenue. The third photo of a duplex was built by two lawyers who were also partners in their law firm.

If you ever get to St. Paul, Summit Avenue is a must-see for anyone who loves old houses that have generally been painstakingly restored.

Badlands, SD

We approached the Badlands from the Black Hills by way of SD 44. This route goes between the north and south portions of the Badlands. The south portion is governed in cooperation with the Rosebud Sioux tribe. We got to Ceder Pass campground, a USFS campground near the visitor's center. It had flush toilets and water and places for people to camp, though there were few trees. Each picnic table had a sun and wind shelter (the wind comes predominantly from the south). This first photo is the view from the campground.

That night there was a ranger's talk. Things have changed since I was a child when the ranger sat around a campfire and gave a talk. Now they have screens with reverse projection of power point presentations. The temporary summer ranger, from Tennessee where he teaches school, gave a really interesting presentation on the Homestead Act of 1862. Lincoln proposed the act in order to have more persons sympathetic to the north populate the Louisiana Purchase. He waited until part way through the Civil War to suggest the act. Interestingly, only people who had taken up arms against the north were prohibited from participating.

That meant that women, blacks and foreigners could try to earn their 160 acres by improving 5 acres by farming for 5 years. In the Badlands 95% of the people failed because the land gets so little rain. In the middle of the talk it began to thunder and lightning and so it was cut short as we all ran towards our tents and trailers in the downpour.

The next morning Bob and I got up early to hike to the Notch, 1.2 miles round trip, before it got too hot. Since dogs are not permitted on any trail in a national park, we had to leave Darwin in the car. The trail was amazing, up through the formations, up a 40' ladder, across ledges and to a notch looking out on the White River. There was no one on the trail except us. The second phot is of the hike up the Notch.

The Badlands were formed from the broken down debris washed out of the Black Hills over millions of years. Eventually the land was covered with a shallow sea and when that disappeared about 500,000 years ago the rivers began to erode the land into the present formations.
They lose about 2" every year. After hiking to the Notch, we visited the Visitor's Center and headed out on the 31 mile road to Wall, SD. It had wonderful overlooks and the colors were amazing.

When we finally reached Wall we did not visit Wall Drug, but headed east on I-90 for about 125 miles before we headed off on blue highways to Hamilton Lake State Park on the SD-Minnesota border. It had a disc golf course.

Food on the Trail

This photo shows Bob's breakfast, also called the "Tower of Power." All of the food to the right of the bowls are what he has for breakfast: granola, almonds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, raisins, yogourt, milk or juice and fruit. To the left of the photo is my breakfast: musli with milk and fruit.

We have mainly eaten out of the trailer or at friends' houses. When we do eat out, we generally do so for breakfast. We have tried the following restaurants mentioned in "Road Food" by Jane and Michael Stern:

Stella's in Billings, MT (large cinnamon rolls and plate size pancakes)
Lange's Cafe in Pipeston, MN (gooey caramel rolls and the best sour cream raisin meringue pie)
Cafe Latte in St. Paul, MN (wonderful high class cafeteria food and amazing layer cakes)
Pie Company in Traverse City, MI (wonderful pies)

In addition, we have found a few gems ourselves:

La Tarasca in Centralia, WA (Michoacan food)
Blackbery Patch in Hungry Horse, MT (huckleberry pancakes)
Rock Cod Cafe in Cowichan, BC (yummy fish sandwiches)
Udder Guy in Cowichan, BC (amazing ice cream)
Old Vines Restaurant in Qualsgate Winery, Kelowna BC (very high class lunch, lamb burger, panini with chicken, goat cheese and pepino pesto)
Pastry Shoppe in Lanesboro, MN (breakfast without a menu, you simply tell them what you want, wonderful Danishes)

We're not suffering in the food department. We've also bought Cornish pasties in the Upper peninsula and smoked whitefish, artisinal cheese in the Okanagan, Wisconsin cheeses in Wisconsin.