For the next couple of days, we'll be traveling along the Minnesota / Wisconsin border, bouncing back and forth between the two states to see various sights on both sides.
-----
Although there were no thunderstorms to keep us up last night, we were awoken at 7 a.m. by the wonderful sounds of road construction happening right outside the Walmart parking lot Thursday morning. Joy.
One of the items that we had wanted to buy at Walmart, but was out of stock, was an additional set of bubble levels for the van. We had received a single T-shaped level in the "welcome kit" we got with our van, which we keep in the galley drawer and take out and put on the counter when pulling into a campsite to determine left/right and front/back pitch as we figure out the best part of the site pad to park on. But having to go back and do that was beginning to seem like an unnecessary and onerous step to parking - and not particularly safe for the person standing in the back watching the level - so having levels attached in the front where we could see them from the seats seemed like a good idea. It turns out the Menards 3 miles away not only had them in stock, but cheaper than Walmart would've been - win/win!
Along the way, we decided we had to stop at an intriguing looking store we had seen while in town a couple of days ago: "Mystery Deals". Not knowing anything about the store - other than the fact that it had an eye-catching sign - we Googled it and found their website that claimed "We sell the same merchandise as any big box store but at a 25-75% regularly discounted price.". Worth a look, right?
As it turns out, "Mystery Deals" was more flash than substance. The large doors below the sign don't actually lead to a single store, but rather a hallway connecting four very small stores and a restroom; "Mystery Deals" was one of those stores, occupying a room roughly a quarter the size of a typical Dollar Tree store - with the most eclectic assortment of merchandise one could imagine. Sort of like a micro "TJ Maxx meets Goodwill". Some of the food items were clearly Costco packages that had been opened and labeled for resale individually. And not cheaply, either. Needless to say, no purchases were made (by us, at least) at "Mystery Deals".
Menards did not disappoint, though. We bought our levels, and promptly affixed them in the cab: one on the dash next to the steering wheel to measure left/right level, and one on the side/base of the passenger seat to measure front/back level.
-----
As we headed south, we passed through Industrial Township, MN and took this photo - not a particularly high quality photo, but kind of appropriate quality-wise given the subject matter 😉.
We crossed over into Wisconsin around 1:40 PM . . .
. . . on our way to our first stop: The St. Croix National Riverway Visitor Center (in St. Croix Falls) 173 miles (2.75 hours) from our starting point in the morning. We browsed the displays in the (very small) museum area and got some recommendations for things to see along the St. Croix River. Unfortunately, their theater was broken so we couldn't see their usual film.
Afterwards we tried walking the town's Main Street, but most everything was closed.
Driving 1.5 miles back over the St. Croix River again returned us to Minnesota . . .
. . . and brought us to Interstate State Park, where we'd be spending the night. We started our visit by looking through the small Visitor Center.
Unlike the ones at Temperance River, though, these are "glacial potholes", not active ones, so they sit high above the level of the current river instead of being a part of it. As a result, though, they've been able to fish all sorts of interesting things out of the potholes over the years.
Next we walked the Pothole Trail - a meandering 0.5 mile paved, multi-level path that leads through the collection of potholes. Some of the potholes were quite large in diameter, but unfortunately the recent rains had filled most of them with water making it difficult/impossible to see exactly how deep they were.
This tree essentially growing out of a rock amongst the potholes was quite extraordinary!
We also walked a portion of the River Trail, for better views of the St. Croix - as well as Wisconsin's Interstate State Park on the other side.
Before getting back in the T42, we walked the road bridge across the St. Croix for photos of the St. Croix Falls Dam (probably crossing back into and out of Wisconsin again in the process 😉).
Then we headed to the campground and got settled in for the evening. A combination of light sprinkles, overly warm temperatures, and mosquitoes kept us from being able to grill that evening - but this little bunny that came out to say "hi" made up for it.
Comments
Post a Comment