MPH Travels: Truck Stops, Mega Shops, Men Who Fly and Bugs that Bite

Consumer Heaven and More Aviation History – 12/06/10

Last night at Iowa 80 was a shocker. This place never sleeps. There was a degree of noisy comings and goings all night but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was the temperature. Yesterday was sunny and about 90 degrees (30-ish Celsius) all day and it barely cooled down all night. It must’ve been over 30 in the van even with the back windows opened. We sweltered and had trouble sleeping. Eventually, about 2am, we drifted off.
And awoke at 7am to the patter of rain. We closed the van windows and looking outside, we saw the rain intensifying and the sky looking threatening in that special way it reserves for tornado alley. We went into the trucker’s loft and got washed and then hit the road, only the passenger side windshield wiper blade slid out. No worries, we’re at the largest truckstop in the world, right? They’ll have wiper blades, right? Wrong. They only sell complete wiper arms and I don’t want to spend the $7 extra. So after much cussing in the rain, I manage to jury-rig the wiper blade in place. It wipes once and then the wiper arm snaps and I need to spend the $7 and fit a new one anyway. Bugger.
Thankfully there was no more wiper trouble the rest of the day.

Which is good because the rain followed us much of the day. We began by driving west on Interstate 80 through Iowa city and the rain intensified until the sky was black and the rain came down as heavy as I’ve ever seen in Queensland. Visibility was down to about 30 meters. The weather clobbered us all the way to Des Moines, where we turned northward onto the I 35. The weather eased up some as we headed northward through central Iowa but strong crosswinds made for tiresome driving on the very exposed and dead-straight highway.

About lunchtime we crossed the border into Minnesota, the “Land of 10 000 lakes”. We followed the highway up to the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul. We stopped for a couple of hours, for a late lunch and some window shopping at the Mall Of America. This place used to be the largest mall in the Northern Hemisphere and it is HUGE. Apart from the thousands of shops, there are several roller-coasters, a log-flume and many rides in the main atrium. I have heard it said that if you tried to spend 5 minutes in each shop and didn’t stop for rest, it would take two days. I can believe it.

Later in the afternoon, we drove out of Minneapolis north on I 94 and made our way by early evening to the Circle R Ranch, near the town of Little Falls (Hometown of Charles Lindbergh, who was the first to fly across the Atlantic, solo in his plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, which we recently saw at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum).

The Circle R is the ranch where Pia worked as a summer camp counsellor in 1999. She had contacted the owner, Jack McCoy ages ago and told him we may stop by and he had said that we were welcome. Over the last week though, we weren’t able to get him (it’s his busy season at the moment). So we took a bit of a chance and just dropped by. No luck. Jack wasn’t in.

We drove down the road to Little Falls and got a campsite in the Charles Lindbergh State Park. It is very beautiful and the rain has stopped (touch wood). We are having a red wine and a canned dinner by a campfire in a lush forest and it is really lovely and peaceful. No trucks or lights or loud children.
Tomorrow morning, weather permitting, we are going to get up early and have a short hike before returning to the ranch to try and catch up with Jack.

Personal note: I’ve just been bitten on the leg by a mosquito THROUGH MY JEANS. The bugger must’ve been the size of a small bird.

Go West, Young Man… - 13/06/10

We slept well in the Charles Lindbergh State Park last night until I woke up in the wee, small hours to the sound of some sort of creature rummaging around outside the van. Pia heard it too, so I got dressed and jumped out with a flashlight, prepared to give the poor (cougar, bear, Bigfoot, whatever) a jolly stern talking to. Nothing there. We went back to bed and I heard it again later but ignored it.

Waking this morning in a beautiful forest, we decided to go for a walk. But about 200 meters from the van, we turned back. We’ve never seen mosquitos like this. We (and especially I, because mossies come from miles around for my blood) couldn’t even take two steps without being buzzed or bitten. Literally. There were clouds of them. You couldn’t even breathe without getting them in your nose and throat. I ate one and they kept buzzing my ears. It was a thoroughly disappointing morning walk.

We arrived at the Circle R Ranch and Pia got a chance to catch up with a few of the counsellors she knew who are still there, some campers who are now counsellors and with the owner, Jack McCoy. A happy but all too brief reunion. They had a very busy day ahead and so did we…

We drove through Long Prairie and headed southwest on state highway 23, which led us diagonally right across Minnesota. The scenery here is still that big, flat farmland-ey sort. It is very green and lush. One look at this place would make any Australian farmer cry. It is very pretty, though.

In the late afternoon, we joined the Interstate 90 and crossed into South Dakota. At about 5:30, we pulled up at a campground in a place called Oacoma, about 200 miles short of Rapid City. One look around this place and we can tell that we are in the west again. You can tell from the vehicles, the hats, and the restaurants.

We had a good dinner across the road in a western restaurant and returned early to our campsite. Tomorrow we will leave early for Rapid City and Mount Rushmore. We may even get in a cheesy roadside attraction…