Hello again. Our last episode
concluded on Sunday, June 21st, when we arrived at the Red River
Valley Fairgrounds RV Park in West Fargo, North Dakota. According to my
research, we arrived in Fargo within minutes of the Official
beginning of Summer, the Summer Solstice. This year it occurred at
12:38 p.m., just about the time we got to Fargo. Welcome Summer! We
settled in and stayed at home for the rest of our first day here.
On Monday we were up and out of the
coach after lunch to do some exploring. It had rained a lot
overnight, most of the night in fact, but the morning was quite nice.
We did some drive-around tourism and a few geocaches, at least those
we didn't have to go throu
Fargo is the largest city in North
Dakota and has a population of about 116,000. The entire metro area,
including Moorhead, West Fargo and a couple other nearby communities,
is over 228,000. Fargo was founded in 1871, first as a steamboat
stop on the Red River and a few years later as a major railroad town.
The economy of the Fargo area has historically been dependent on
agriculture. That dominance has decreased substantially in recent
decades. Now, the city of Fargo has a growing economy based on food
processing, manufacturing, technology, retail trade, higher
education, and healthcare. In a study published by Forbes, Fargo was
ranked the best small city in the nation to start a business or a
career.
We were able to get six new geocache
finds for the afternoon, including a couple in Minnesota, our first
in that state since 2008, our first year of geocaching. After our
tour of the city we headed back to the RV park for the rest of the
afternoon.
Tuesday, June 23rd, we awoke to the
promise of another great day, partly cloudy skies, little chance of
storms and temps in the low 80's. We left the coach after lunch and
headed out to do some geocaching first. We had a slew of caches
right near the RV park and we were able to get 14 new finds, and one
DNF, in about two and a half hours. We stopped and caching and
decided to head to the Fargo-Moorhead Elks Lodge. The lodge is
currently located in a building on the far north side of Fargo, out
near the airport. The building looks like an old restaurant is a bit
run down. This is a very old Lodge, Lodge #260, chartered in 1896.
According to a friend of ours, who grew up in Fargo, the lodge used
to be in downtown. We got there just after it opened and there were
only a couple of people there besides the Club Manager.
He told us that at one time the lodge
had 5,000 members, but now was at about 350 or so. Although their
current building is nothing to look at, they did have a huge stained
gla
Wednesday, June 24th, we left the RV
park around noon and headed into Fargo for lunch. I had been
“Jonesing” for some Chinese for a while, so we selected a
downtown Chinese Buffet called King's Chinese. It is right in the
middle of downtown on a busy street corner. The outside of the
building is very plain, but the interior decor was very pretty and
very reminiscent of old Chinese restaurants. Lunch was less than $9
each and they had a good selection of foods. Both Jackie and I would
give the place a solid 3 out of 5 rating. They had a couple of
things I really liked, the beef and onion and the sweet and sour
chicken. A couple of things not so much, the egg flower soup
especially. We ate way too much, as is usually the case, but enjoyed
the meal nonetheless.
After lunch we walked around downtown a
little bit, to help walk off the big lunch. Then we went out to do
some geocaching. We had a great afternoon, getting 19 new finds with
only one DNF. Most of the caches we found were on the east side of
the river, in Moorhead, Minnesota. After caching we headed home
where we had a couple of hours of rain. Tonight there were no real
storms going over, just some on and off moderate rain showers. We
stayed in the rest of the night.
Thursday, June 25th, we headed out
after lunch to take in a movie. We went to see San Andreas, the
latest big disaster movie. Both Jackie and I are fans of hokey
disaster flicks, we watch the cheesy made for TV SyFi channel movies
all the time. Of course, this was a big budget movie, so all the
computer graphics were top notch. The plot and story line were
typical for this type of movie, family breaking up, family getting
back together in the face of total chaos. None of the science was
even close, but to enjoy these kinds of movies you have to suspend
belief and just go with the flow. It was very suspenseful, lots of
scary moments, outstanding special effects and CG work, and all the
heroes lived. Can't ask for more than that in a disaster movie.
I was more than impressed with the
theater. We went to one of the Marcus Theater chain's locations here
in Fargo. They have 56 theaters around the Midwest and have great
amenities. The seating is stadium style, with leather power
recliners that are huge, for big boned fellows like me. The theater
is mostly tandem recliners, with a few individual seats near the
ends. Great digital projection and sound and all for only about a
buck or two more for admission. We paid $7 for the senior matinee,
which is usually around $5.50 or $6 at other chains. Well worth the
extra money. A large popcorn and drink cost as nearly much as the
movie, but that is standard at all the theaters. The lady in front
of us was getting popcorn and drinks for two adults and four kids and
her bill was almost $32! After the movie we did a few caches,
getting three new finds, before heading home for the rest of the
night.
Friday, June 26th, we went out after
lunch to do our laundry. After laundry we went to a couple of pawn
shops. We like to look around in pawn shops because you never know
what you might find. At one we picked up the first two seasons of
Breaking Bad on DVD for $12. We have been wanting to see this series
and missed it on TV. At the second one we found a 7 inch photo frame
for $8 and it was brand new. Our last frame quit working a year ago
and we have been watching for an inexpensive replacement. We then
got one geocache on the way home and then stayed in the rest of the
night.
Saturday, June 27th, we left the coach
around noon and went out to lunch. We decided on a Mexican place
that was fairly highly rated on Yelp. It was called Mango's, and it
was actually pretty good. It was very typical Sonoran Mexican
cooking and the best praise I could give it would be that it would be
competitive in Arizona or Southern California. We had a great meal
and then did some geocaching. We had another good afternoon, with 14
new finds and 2 DNFs. After caching we stopped at a couple of craft
stores because Jackie was looking for some cord to use for her
lanyards that she is making with the pop tabs she has.
After caching we headed home. Normally
I would say we stayed in the rest of the night, or we just watched TV
until bed. Tonight it was three hours of pins and needles. There
was a long line of huge thunderstorms that was east of Fargo moving
through North Dakota. We had the local news on and were watching the
radar on the weather. The weather radio was going off every ten
minutes with a new tornado warning or thunderstorm warning somewhere
in the area. Fortunately, after there hours we had never had a
tornado watch over our exact location, but it was just ten miles
east, the closest we have come to having a severe storm on top of us.
About 8:00 everything settled down and we had a quiet night.
Sunday, June 28th, another travel day.
We were packed up and on the road about 10:30 and headed southeast to
Alexandria, Minnesota, about 113 miles away. It was an uneventful
trip with mostly clear skies, although it was a little windy. We
arrived at the Alexandria RV park about 1:00, after a quick fuel
stop, and got settled in. We aren't expecting any storms tonight and
we decided to just stay in for the rest of the day. We get our “off”
days on travel days.
Monday we woke up to overcast skies,
but no forecast of storms. We headed out after lunch to explore
Alexandria. The town was incorporated in 1877 and has a population
of about 13,000. The town is located in the middle of what is known
locally as “Lake Country” with dozens of glacial lakes scattered
around the area. The town's primary economic engine is tourism, with
some light industry. We first did a few geocaches, getting six new
finds, along with two DNFs for our efforts. After caching we visited
a place called Ron's Warehouse, a store we saw in one of the local
tourist magazines. Ron's store is 34,000 square feet and they sell
reclaimed merchandise, stuff they buy from companies and stores going
out of business or closing. It reminded both Jackie and I of some of
the places in Quartzsite or Yuma. We spent well over an hour going
through the store. They have everything, food, canned goods,
clothing, furniture, electronics, just about anything you can think
of. We ended up with three bags of things and only spent $53. Great
place to stop and shop.
After Ron's we went to the Alexandria
Elks Lodge. The lodge is near downtown in a pretty good sized
building. The bar is open every day for happy hour and there were
quite a few people in the place. The bartender was kind of grumpy
and unfriendly, but the guys at the bar were very nice and talked to
us. We had a couple of drinks and got our lodge pin for the banner.
This was a new lodge for us. After the Elks we headed to Walmart for
some supplies and then headed back to the coach for the rest of the
night.
Tuesday, June 30th, another travel day.
Today we were packed up and headed out of Alexandria about 10:30,
moving southeast to Eagan, Minnesota, about 150 miles away. Eagan is
a suburb of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, on the southeast
side of the Twin Cities. We are staying at the Lebanon Hills County
Park campground, one of the Dakota County parks. We have a very
nice, full hookup, 50 amp site in a nice, green wooded area. We
arrived at the park around 2:00 and got settled in and setup by 3:30
or so. We are going to be here in the Twin Cities for a week, over
the 4th of July Holiday Weekend. We were last in this area back in
2008 when we came to an FMCA rally here. We didn't get to see much
of the area on that trip, so we are looking forward to having a week
to explore.
Wednesday, July 1st, Happy Canada Day
and say goodbye to half of 2015. We left the coach after lunch for a
day of exploring the Twin Cities area. Our first destination was
downtown St. Paul. St. Paul was incorporated in 1854, shortly after
the creation of the Minnesota Territory and the naming of the small
city on the Mississippi River as the capitol. In 1858 Minnesota
became a State and St. Paul was again designated as the capitol. The
current population is just under 300,000 and it is the second largest
city in the State. Along with Minneapolis, the largest city in the
State, it is part of the Twin Cities region. The metro area of the
two large cities and their contiguous neighbors, is about 3.5
million.
We wanted to tour the capitol building,
as we have in the last couple states we have been through, but the
building is undergoing a major renovation. There is so much
scaffolding and plastic sheeting surrounding the building you can
barely see it at all. We spent an hour or so driving around St. Paul
and also got a geocache there. We then drove west through town to
Minneapolis. Minneapolis was incorporated in 1867 and has a
population of just over 400,000. We again spent some time driving
around, looking at downtown and some of the neighborhoods, stopping
to get one geocache.
After our quick tours of the two big
cities, we went back down south to the suburbs and stopped at the new
Twin Cities Outlet Mall. It is a huge mall and we spent a couple of
hours walking around. Jackie got a new watch and we got a few other
little things. After the outlet mall we stopped at a farmer's market
in Eagan, the town in which the park we are in is located. It wasn't
as big as we thought it would be and we were only there about a hour.
By the time we got finished it was getting close to 6:30, so we
stopped at a local Mexican restaurant for dinner. The place was
called La Fonda de los Lobos, the Inn of the Wolves. Didn't see any
wolves about and we weren't impressed with the inn part either. The
food was so so, the service not so good. The chips were stale,
although the salsa was good. I had beef fajitas which were OK.
Jackie had chicken enchiladas that had a lot of chicken, but they
overcooked them and burned all the enchilada sauce off of them. The
server finally brought some extra sauce, which helped. After dinner
we headed back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the night.
Thursday, July 2nd, we left the coach
around 11:00 and went to spend the day at the Mall of America, which
is only a few miles from the park we are in. We had wanted to go to
this mall when we were here in 2008 for the FMCA rally, but we were
so busy at the rally that we never got to go. In 2009 we were able
to stop and spend the day at the West Edmonton Mall in Edmonton,
Alberta, Canada, which is the largest mall in North America. The
Mall of America is second to the King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania
as the largest mall in the U.S. in terms of retail space. The mall
here has about 2.5 million square feet of retail space and just over
500 stores. The Mall of America has a much more compact footprint
than does the Edmonton Mall, which is spread out and has a lot more
non-retail attractions, like the water park and skating rink.
Nonetheless, the Mall of America is big, three floors of stores with
a mile of corridor on each floor.
We had lunch first at the Ruby
Tuesday's restaurant, one of fifty or so choices. We both had
hamburgers and the lunch was great. We then spent the next three
hours walking around each of the floors, as well as the big amusement
park that takes up the center area of the mall. With all that, the
only thing we ended up buying was one inexpensive pair of shoes. The
amusement park is all themed after characters on various Nickelodeon
Television network shows, Sponge Bob, Dora the Explorer, Rug Rats,
etc. They have about five roller coasters and a log ride, as well as
a dozen smaller, kiddie rides. After three hours of walking, we were
pretty wore out, so when we finished we headed home and relaxed for
the rest of the night.
Friday, July 3rd, we left the coach
after lunch and drove back to the Mall of America to visit the
Minnesota Sealife Aquarium, which is located in the basement of the
mall. We had seen it yesterday and, since it has been a couple years
since we visited an aquarium, we decided to go back today and visit
it. It is not a huge aquarium, but most of the big tanks are the
“tube” type, where you walk through and the tank is on the sides
and curves above you. This gives you some pretty good views of the
fish. We spent about an hour and a half walking through the
aquarium. It was a little pricey considering it's small size, but we
still had fun.
After the aquarium we spent about an
hour walking through the Ikea store, which is located right next door
to the mall. I have never been in an Ikea and thought it was pretty
neat. Once we were done there we stopped so Jackie could get a hair
cut and then went back to the RV park. The park is full tonight,
mostly with families enjoying the holiday weekend, so we sat outside
with our cocktails and enjoyed the nice weather and watched the
people running about.
Saturday, July 4th, Happy Indepen- dence
Day. We decided that we would have a nice stay at home day today.
We got a few chores done around the coach and just enjoyed a down day
f
Monday, July 6th, our last full day in
Minneapolis. We had a heck of a night. Rain moved in, which had
been predicted, around midnight and we had torrential rain for about
six hours. There was some thunder and lightning, but the storms were
minor, it was the rain that was bad. We developed a leak around the
vent in the bathroom which was pouring water in. I managed to get
some towels down and a pan to catch the worst of it, so the laminate
flooring stayed dry. Fortunately, nothing else in the coach leaked,
but we really had rain. When I got up I checked the local news and
the weather gal said we had about three inches in our area, but just
to the east of us they had over seven inches and were under flash
flood warning.
The heavy rain stopped about sunup, but
rain showers continued on and off until almost 3:00. It was way too
wet to cache and we really didn't have anything we needed to do, so
we just stayed in the rest of the day. In the early evening things
had dried enough that I spent an hour or so taking stuff down and
putting everything away for travel tomorrow.
Tuesday, July 7th, a travel day. We
left Eagan about 11:00 and found our way to the freeway and headed to
Osseo, Wisconsin, about 120 miles southeast. Osseo is a very small
town, about 1,700, that is about 20 miles south of Eau Claire, a
pretty good sized town for rural Wisconsin. There were no RV parks
in Eau Claire, so we had to go south a little. We arrived at the
Stoney Creek RV Resort about 1:00 and pretty quickly got setup. This
is a very nice park with lots of amenities and appears to be well
taken care of.
As usual on travel days, we didn't go
anywhere today. I did go up on the roof and did some caulking around
the bathroom vent that leaked so bad the other night. I hope I have
that problem taken care of now. The other leaks seem to be staying
fixed. We will be here in Osseo for three days before continuing
south and east. When we crossed the border today I arrived back in
my birth state. I was born in Milwaukee, but my folks moved to
Arizona in 1960 when I was 13.
Our arrival in Wisconsin marks an
excellent place to end this chapter and get it online. I will have
another episode published just before we start our rally series here
in Wisconsin. Until next time, remember the words of philosopher
Herm Albright, who said; “A positive attitude may not solve all
your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the
effort.” Get out there and annoy some people! See ya.
