We rolled into Minnesota from the southeastern corner along the Mississippi river passing smaller towns like Winona and Red Wing. Our goal was to make it near the Twin Cities so we can have a couple of days of down time to hang out with some friends we have in Read more…
Our visit to Minnesota ended this morning as we left Lebanon Hills campground and headed back on the road east towards Wisconsin. In the end, we were really glad to have spent our time in Lebanon Hills as the campground was one of the nicest we have ever been in. The electric only sites are actually nicer than the full hookup sites as they are much more private and have a lot more space. The newly renovated and heated bathrooms were also some of the nicest with free hot showers and heated floors.
We started the last day here in the Twin Cities with a trip to get some authentic Mexican food. Being from southern California, there is not a shortage of great Mexican restaurants. But having been gone for over a month already, we are savoring the opportunity to eat at a good one.
With two days left in the Twin Cities, we still have a lot to see and not very much time. As we mentioned before, we are not fans of towing the Airstream in the snow and at this part of the country, it would not be totally strange if we were to see a little snow in September. Our plan today, stock up on some local farmed goods at the Saint Paul Farmers Market and head over to Minneapolis to see what that ‘other’ city is all about.
The campground is starting to fill up a bit as today is Friday and we are no longer the only people in our loop. The weather here has been great although it can change at the drop of a hat. We are here for another couple more days and we still need to try to squeeze lots of visits in before we leave. Today, we have some housekeeping to do as well as some sightseeing so we got to it bright and early. At our pace, that is around 11am.
We had a great first night in Lebanon Hills and woke up to a beautiful day. The gloom and rain from yesterday is long gone and the forecast looks like we are in for quite a treat for the remainder of our stay here. Since today is Thursday, we expect some campers to start showing up later this afternoon.
This morning we are finally leaving the Minnesota Airstream Park. We had five great nights here and all of the people we met couldn’t have been friendlier. If we lived in Minnesota, we would be very tempted to buy a lot of our own.
We woke up this morning and noticed that a bunch of our dish towels under the sink were soaking wet. No, someone wasn’t feverishly washing dishes and drying them off while we slept. After a closer look, we found that the connection at the upwards portion of the ‘U’ pipe of the sink drain had worked itself loose. Thank God we had those towels there or we might have had a lot more water in hard to clean places. And that, was the most exciting thing we have done for the last 2 days.
Today we are once again going to stay put at our campground. Four full days of travel kind of kicked us in the you-know-what. So we are going to do our best to avoid getting in our van today. Challenge accepted!
We started off our day with a little homeschooling lesson about geodes. Back at the museum in Deadwood, we bought some geodes for the girls and they have been begging for us to crack them open ever since the gift shop lady handed us the receipt. Not at all annoying, kids. Not. At. All.
We decided to stay in Clear Lake today at the Airstream Park since we haven’t really had a slow easy day in nearly a week. Our friends who invited us here, Tim and Melanie, have driven up from their home in Minneapolis to spend the weekend here as well and we are glad to see them again.
St. Paul is one of the cities we had planned to visit during this leg of the trip besides Denver. Our plan so far has worked out quite well with decent weather all along the way. We have only needed to use the AC a couple of nights and finally here in Minnesota, we are turning on the furnace in the evening.
