August 30th - September 3rd, Erskine MN and Fargo ND

Labor Day Weekend, August 30-Sept 1 Erskine, Minnesota

The short drive (81 miles), to visit our friends Tony and Julie, passed quickly and was typical Northern Minnesota, surrounded by state and national forests, Mississippi headwaters regions, and Native Reservations (White Earth, Red Lake, Leech Lake).  Tony and Julie have a beautiful house on Union Lake and after a bit of expert driving by the guys we were 

able to snuggle both of our campers in their driveway for the weekend.  We slept in our own beds but it was nice to be able to spread out and hang out with them.  It is easy to see why they love coming back to Minnesota for the summers to escape the Arizona heat but they have had a lot of cool rainy weather this summer.  For the next three days we had so much fun that we are wondering when we might be able to 

visit again.  We toured Union Lake by boat, huddled under blankets when we were going into the wind.  Stops at a couple of campgrounds resulted in a great adventure for ice cream.  The camp owners leave a golf cart with the keys in it at water's edge for those wanting to come to the camp store.  The six of us piled on and headed for ice cream.  The golf cart is affectionately called the "Blue Bunny Express" since they sell, you guessed it, Blue Bunny Ice cream.  The portions were large and the prices very reasonable.  So reasonable that later in the weekend we returned by truck to sample additional flavors.

Our hosts fed us well, maybe a little too well!! We had several homemade soups, including one with red cabbage that Tony E. threw together.  We had pork chops from the sous vide finished on the green egg cooker,  fresh caught sunfish with soup for lunch one afternoon, hamburgers and brats with another couple before we played an eight person euchre tournament.  Bacon and eggs were served for breakfast one morning and we all were more than happy to clean up and wash dishes.  In between our feasts we played many, many games of pegs and jokers (similar to aggravation), Karma ( a card game Noel and Karen introduced us to) and a few games of Siamese Mah Jongg too.  We experienced the traditional Norwegian sauna with a dunk in the lake afterward.  Well OK, I waded into the lake versus jumping off the end of the dock, but close enough!  There  was also an awesome mid afternoon fire in the fire pit as we visited and enjoyed the lake views.

A little bit of exploring took us by the sand pit, the town of Winger and the farm equipment business they owned.  Some off road meandering in our truck showed a couple of hunting and camping spots.  Luckily the paths were wide enough and the ground dry enough for a uneventful ride.  One other notable sighting, butterflies.  Hundreds of them particularly Painted Lady Butterflies, smaller, but similar coloring to Monarchs were hanging on Julie's sedum plants in her beautiful flower beds, filling up before their migration.   A near disastrous event happened the morning we were leaving.  Tony E. was flying his drone across the lake to get footage of a neighbors wedding tent  by the lake in the morning sunlight.  Well the low approach angle and less than expert maneuvering caused a crash.  As the boat came off the hoist rather quickly and sped across the lake we surmised what had happened and were afraid the drone was lost in the lake.  Julie said, "I told you his nick name was "OOPS"".  However all was not lost and after about 20 minutes the boat came back with the dry drone that had crashed in the weeds along the shore.  Another "OOPS" averted!!

Saturday morning we drove to a local park and played PickleBall.  It was much fun especially since we have not played all summer even though we have our rackets along.  It is just not as popular as it is in the south and west and retirement communities.  Noel and Karen were happy to join the fun as they are just learning the game and with the couple of locals that showed up we rotated the seven of us for about 90 minutes.  It was fun to browse the local farmers market in between games.  Sunday, Tony and I joined Julie and Tony for mass at St. Lawrence in

Mentor.  The Stone Bell Tower is an imposing structure as you enter the church and it is obvious that summer is winding down since the church was not crowded and had no need to use the overflow area.  Saturday and Sunday evenings were supposed to be prime viewing nights for the Northern Lights.  Saturday was too cloudy and though Sunday was clear the Northern Lights were still elusive.  We did see pictures of some sightings that had happened back along the north shore around Grand Marais where we were last week, but none here, despite several checks when the guys did their middle of the night bathroom breaks.

Fargo North Dakota - Monday-Tuesday Sept 2-3

The Countdown Continues-Second to the last state to camp in!

Monday-We met one of our Arizona buddies, Bev, at the Fargo Costco where we easily parked our RV's since they were closed on Labor Day.  She picked us and the five of us went to lunch at Spitfire Grill.  Bev's walleye fingers (like chicken tenders) were unique and tasty and so was the rest of our lunch fare.  Back at Costco we said good-bye to Noel and Karen as we split up for a while and we set up camp at Lindenwood Campground in Roger Maris Park, right on the Red River.  He is famous as a local right fielder who set new a home run record, 61 in 1961, that remained unbroken until 1998.  OH, it looked so inviting as we wound our way back off the street down a tree lined road.  UNTIL- we checked in and made the turn to our camp site and realized that we backed up to I-94.  I don't think it would have been any noisier if we were parked at a rest area right on the highway!  I swear I could almost see the people in their cars.  There were prettier sites, still noisy (since I-94 parallels 

the river), along the river bank, but not long enough for us.  Even with the windows closed because of the cooler weather, the noise was not shut out.   By the way, the Red River is one of only a handful of rivers in the world that flow from south to north!   Later we met at Bev's, beautiful condo and I was able to do some laundry.  Tony ran out to grab Sub-way Sandwiches for a light dinner in between our many Mah Jongg games. A fierce storm kicked up with rain and high winds and caused  a short power outage.    It was great to weather it in a solid building instead of our RV.

Tuesday - With recommendations from Bev and Trip Advisor we headed out to explore Fargo.  Tony found a tire shop to switch our second spare to the aluminum rim and dropped it off while we explored.  First stop was the F-M (Fargo ND-Moorehead MN) Visitor Center in a beautifully restored old Grain Elevator.  With free coffee in hand, we browsed the cheesy exhibits about the movie Fargo, said hello to 

one of the many painted Bison around town and checked out the walk of fame from performers who have visited Fargo.  These included Lawrence Welk (a ND native), Alan Jackson, Bert and Ernie among others.  Since I have not seen an accordion player yet this summer, and I usually do, I may have to settle for Myron Floren's  (famous accordion performer) square!  My aunt is an excellent accordionist and we joke about seeing accordions or accordion references in unique places.

At the Hjemnkomst Visitor Center we spent a couple of hours on various exhibits including Nordic Cultural items like wooden carvings. We saw the replica Norwegian ship a local had built to honor his heritage.  He actually sailed it with a crew out of Duluth across Lake Superior in 1982 to Norway.  It sustained a lot of damage on the journey and had to come back on a freighter.  The videos about the construction, the journey and the local support and ethnic pride were fun to watch.

Behind the visitor center is the Hopperstad stave church replica.  It is a replica of a stave (tall straight timbers) church in Norway, built by a local  ND aerospace engineer turned craftsman.  The workmanship and detail are amazing, the building has 24,000 hand made wooden shingles on it. The Nordic peoples were great ship builders.   Their ships were strong so they inverted the design principle and the roof looks like you are looking into a boat, good for holding up lots of frozen water, aka snow.  The decor and paintings are simple and rustic and very accurately depicts the construction and design of the time it 

represents. A particularly interesting design feature is the leper door.  A small door which when opened, allowed unclean peoples to listen to the service from outside on the surrounding walkway and to receive communion through the opening.  Another feature is a short, narrow, main entry door that allowed only one person at a time to enter, affording some protection from raids or marauders in times of upheaval.

The main floor also had a huge photography exhibit called  "Truth in Focus" from a ND local (Colburn Hvidston III) who started taking photos of friends and family as early as age six.  He ended up winning photojournalism's highest award in 1987 and photographing several presidents during his  40 year career as a photojournalist much of it with the Fargo Forum.   I am especially fond of Black /White photography which was a lot of his early work.  His noted that his job is:  "Making Images that Evoke a Response".  The basement of the center had the

work of a female artist (Vaishali Mohite) on display that was quite unique.  All of the art was representative of  tribes in Western India near Mumbai, that paints their huts red and the artistic work is all done in white.  It was very striking, made for a great exhibit and the explanations of the symbolism underlying the paintings were very interesting.  A drive by the NDSU campus, through the downtown Fargo area, retrieving our tire and rims ($20 for the swap) and a stop at the grocery store (for DOTS Pretzels), rounded out the afternoon.  Funny the things you see at local grocery stores.  All of the Tostito bags had Vikings logos on the bags, so one might 

guess we were close to Minnesota Vikings fans, he-he-he.  Also a particular brand of sour cream dip is called "Top the Tater".  It is a play on words as it is a chip dip, plus a local favorite to mix with and spread on top of Tater Tot casseroles which are popular around here. Probably very similar to cheesy potato casseroles we grew up with in Michigan but using tater tots instead of hash browns.  Side note:  on our drives today we had several detours due to clean up crews from last night's storms.  Downed limbs and stacks of branches were all about as the city and residents cleaned up the debris.

Rounding out the day, we had dinner at Cork and Cleaver, a 49 year old establishment right across the street from Bev's condo.  Casual dining, with top notch steaks and service, it was very enjoyable, relaxing and delicious.  Since we intended to play more Mahjongg at Bev's place, she let me do another load of laundry as we hung out.  Tony is getting pretty good at American Mahjongg but he still claims it is frustrating!