From Waterford, Wisconsin to Winnipeg, Canada
On our first day we drove from Waterford, Wisconsin, to Duluth, Minnesota. The first 100 miles was a two lane road from Waterford to Madison, the capital of Wisconsin. That section featured bucolic, rolling scenery with new and old barns and even an old one-room schoolhouse like my mother taught in right after WW I. We were intrigued by the East Troy railroad museum but didn't have time to stop, so we marked that for later visit.
From Madison to Eau Claire, we followed the interstate for 150 miles, passing the beautiful Wisconsin Dells where we saw some of those craggy stone towers sticking up over the bushes at the side of the road. The road ran through sparser and sparser settled country, so fewer people, but we saw our first wildlife, a coyote crossing the road in front of us. Of course, the camera was not ready, so we don't have the pictures to prove it! Directly afterwards, we put a camera on the odd divider between the two front seats of the Prius so that either of us could grab it and take a picture in a hurry.
We had a nice lunch of pot roast with mashed potatoes at Culvers, a chain offering high-quality, slowly-cooked "fast" food that is centralized in the upper Midwest. Yum, very tasty. After lunch we drove 150 miles on 4 lane but not always limited access road toward Duluth, which is located on the western end of Lake Superior. We noticed bad weather coming closer and closer and finally we had to drive through a rather heavy thunderstorm. Finally we saw Lake Superior in the distance and wended our way across the St Croix river to Duluth, Minnesota, where we found a Super8 motel for the night.
The next day we had a good breakfast in the motel and were on our way, first West and ultimately North into Canada.
Bob: US Route 2 westward from Duluth crosses a nice, representative swather of central Minnesota. For the entire morning we traveled on a mostly 2-lane rural highway with woods interspersed with farms on either side. There are also a lot of tiny lakes as well as some very large lakes in Minnesota, so all together the variety of rural scenery is very pretty! |
Monika: Afterwards we tried to find the quickest way to US Route 2. Of course, the route we thought would get us there did not have an entrance ramp where we expected one. But after a little backtracking, we did just fine. US Route 2 westward from Duluth crossed a very scenic section of Minnesota, and for the entire morning we traveled on a mostly 2-lane country highway with woods interspersed with farms on either side. Very pretty! Our first stop was at a visitor center in the town of Floodwood, the catfish capital of the world...travel is certainly educational! |
Bob: We paused in Bimidji, MN, to chase a scene from my boyhood where Ray Winterringer and Jack McCaslin took me in a small fishing skiff out on Lake Bimidji. A thunderstorm unexpectedly caught us out on the lake and whipped up whitecaps, forcing the two men to put back to shore. On the way back in we were all drenched in the downpour of course, but the two men graciously gave me a jacket and a hat, so by the time we made it precariously back to shore, they were thoroughly soaked and I was still relatively dry!! Ruth and Vi, their wives, had been rather anxiously watching this whole episode from the boat launch ramp as we were truly in danger of capsizing out on the lake, but once we were all safely back on shore and the boat tucked away, the women had a good laugh about it all. Although hotels now crowd most of that shoreline, I think I found the remains of the old public boat launch ramp where we had our unanticipated adventure. All in all, it brought back fond memories of some fine folks. |
Monika: We stopped in Bimidji where Bob had camped with his folks 60 years ago. The town has grown, but we found an old crumpled former pier, where they probably put in the boat. |
Bob: After Bimidji we left the Lake District of Minnesota and headed North through flat farmland to Canada, and that area reminded me of the flat fields of Illinois and Indiana--productive, but boring. Filling up with cheap American gasoline just before the border , we passed through Canadian Customs without a hitch and continued North to Winnipeg , Manitoba . Monika was driving , so I had to use the Hotels listed on the GPS's "Points Of Interest" to find a hotel for the night. I was VERY thankful that the free lifetime map updates offered by Tom Tom included an updated list of POIs so that we could be reasonably certain that the hotels would actually BE there. The POI categories even include campgrounds, which could also be critically useful information for our drive across Canada to Alaska. |
Monika: We turned north on US 59 to get into Canada on a less traveled road rather than an Interstate. Unfortunately there was a rather large detour that forced us to backtrack, but we still got into Canada by 3:30 in the afternoon. In Canada, the road was less smooth than in the US, but not too bad. That part of Canada (a HUGE country) was clearly an agricultural area with big silos and even a crop duster flying overhead and spraying crops alongside the road. Along one section of highway, the farmers had put little signs near the road to tell us what they where growing in each field: winter wheat, corn, soybeans, and our favorite, alfalfa. This surely helps us city folk. |
