If you don't ask, you don't know!

Woke up to rain and drizzle Wednesday morning. First, they said it would stop around noon... then they said, well maybe it will stop around 2:00pm. But it was actually closer to 4:00pm!

We drove closer to Marquette. I was planning on stopping at the Lowe's to wait out the rain with some decent free WiFi, but as we passed through the town of Negaunee, I saw a sign at a propane place advertising 99 cent a gallon propane.

Knock, knock, knock... again!

Tuesday was a bit of a rain day. It actually started off overcast, and when we woke up at 6:30am the rain hadn't started yet. It was coming from the west, and we were heading east so we figured we could outrun it a little. So, we did some driving right away.

We got in 79 miles (127 kms) before breakfast, and pulled into the town of Hurley right before the Michigan border.

That was a fun bike ride!

We had a really nice day, but it's a good thing we're not really on any kind of a schedule because we sure didn't drive very far.

We got up and did some driving first thing... even before tea and coffee! We find that there are a lot of benefits driving at 6:30am... very little wind, and very few cars on the road. And, then you can get parked up early and enjoy the rest of the day.

Well, that was a fun hour!

On Sunday, we did a fairly long (for us!) drive from Foley, Minnesota to Minong, Wisconsin. We had a really strong tail wind for most of the drive, so we figured we might as well take advantage of it. Pretty sure that Sherman must have got at least 12 mpg... felt like I hardly had to touch the gas pedal at all to keep him at 55 mph.

But, there sure was a lot of traffic. Fortunately, most of it was in the opposite direction. Still, you really have to watch out for people who are in such a rush that they want to pass at what might not be exactly the right time!

More quarantine confusion, and a visit from the police

Saturday morning, we drove into the small city of Saint Cloud (pop 68,000). No ambition to hang out at all... we were only there because it was directly along our route and there was a Walmart at which we could do our weekly grocery shopping.

A couple of interesting things we noticed. A much higher population of Muslim residents shopping in that particular store. In fact, I doubt we have seen that many obvious recent immigrants in total over the last three and a half months as we saw at that one Walmart yesterday. Might be because we are so close to the big city of Minneapolis.

Finally got the kayak out!

We've been doing lots of biking and walking... but it was time to mix things up a bit. We did the short drive from Spicer to Paynesville and used the free RV dump station there, then headed over to the shores of Lake Koronis.

We've been taking a page out of the Tioga George playbook. Anybody who followed Tioga George knows that his way was to find a great place to hang out with his RV during the day... and then around dusk go to his "Night Camp" that he would have already scoped out during the day.

Oh well... it's only water

As some readers have mentioned, there are a lot of bike paths in this part of Minnesota. Yesterday morning, we drove back to the park in Willmar where we got the bikes off and tackled a pathway that leads about 40 miles (65 kms) up towards Paynesville.

We didn't do the whole thing... but we did pretty well!

Hello Minnesota!

When we crossed the border yesterday into Minnesota, both Ruth and I thought "we haven't been to Minnesota for a long time". But then we thought again... we were actually here last summer! When we returned from Australia, our oddball flight routing took us from Hawaii to LA to Minneapolis to Saskatoon. So, we were actually in Minnesota last August 23rd!

And when we crossed into Minnesota, we also remembered that it's not as easy to find free overnight spots as we get into the eastern area of the U.S.. Minnesota State Parks are expensive, and even county and municipal parks we are seeing some at upwards of $30 USD ($40 CAD) per night.

Long bike ride!

Well, yesterday's blog post was an interesting diversion. Even if you disagreed with me, the many comments give you an indication of what other people think about the situation as well. I found it an worthwhile commentary. But today, we are back to our regularly scheduled programming!

On Monday we drove from Tulare to Redfield, only a distance of about 10 miles (16 kms)! It was supposed to be a fairly windy cross wind day and Sherman doesn't like driving in the wind. We are in no rush, so we sat in the motorhome by the library, and got some work done.

My thoughts on Covid-19...

We don't normally comment on world events, or our health, or politics or religion because opinions are almost always too divisive. And sure, of course we have an opinion on all of those things. But this blog is about our life and travels, so those things mentioned above are usually just noise and so we consider them unrelated.

But of course Covid and the reactions to it has affected almost everybody's life, including our own.

Our little buddy

Not much in the way of scenery to show you today. We drove from Pierre to Tulare, South Dakota and it was pretty much flat and farmland. We ended up in the town of Tulare because I had read of a town park that offered three RV sites with electric hookups, and I thought maybe we could waste today there because it's supposed to be too windy to drive.

And I thought maybe with only three sites we might not get a spot, but when we arrived there was nobody there... except for our little buddy who was quick to greet us.

Fresh air and exercise

Saturday was a beautiful day here in Pierre, South Dakota. High of about 86F (30C) with blue sky and sunshine. Only downside was a bit of wind.

We took the bikes out in the morning and went across the causeway to the trails on the island. We planned on doing the other trails in town as well, but found it too windy. Maybe things would calm down later.

Detour!

It was a bit of a late start from the town of Faith as we didn't head out until almost 10:30am. And as we were leaving town, we saw that there was some kind of horse event going on at the arena. So we stopped in to see what was happening.

But we had to walk across a field to get to the side of the fence to get a better view. We really didn't want to walk around to the actual entrance, and we're not big horse people so it's not like we were going to pay to go in. We just wanted to see what was going on.

Looking forward to tomorrow!

Why?

No particular reason. It occurred to me last night that I always look forward to tomorrow! What's the point of living if you don't have anything to look forward to?!

But, tomorrow hasn't happened yet, so let's talk about yesterday. We left our spot by the lake and made our way into the town of Newell where we used their free library WiFi to get caught up on things.

Nice quiet spot by the lake

The sun comes up at about 5:20am in this part of the world right now, so we like to get up early and do some driving. There is hardly anybody on the road, and there's very little wind, if any at all.

So Wednesday morning, we were on the road by about 6:15am and headed further east. The only problem with getting up at that hour and heading east is that the sun is shining right in your eyes!