Before I begin today, please try to overlook my bad grammar, sentence structure, spelling, punctuation, and sometime my bad language. I’m just a hack trying to share the story of two animals, who have the dream to explore Alaska like not many have done. June Wise used to be my secret reviewer and gently “suggest” rewrites. So here we go….hang on.
Filled with 6 ingredients of Spam (in cans), we headed north to Isanti, MN. to Karen and Troy’s house, Ann Marie’s sister and brother-in-law. We drycamped in their large driveway, and were welcomed with a delicious prime rib and shrimp dinner. I have eaten a lot of shrimp, and that was some of the best, and prime rib was cooked perfectly. We had a great time with the whole family. Delores and Virgil blended into the family with Virgil helping little Harvey play battleship against his dad, Michael. The Navy guy gave Harvey the advantage, by being able to identify a battleship from a submarine!
Troy and Karen have specular views of Long Lake on an awesome piece of property. Long Lake is about 7 foot deep and the fishing is good and is just one lake of over 10,000 in the state. Actually, there are 11,842 Minnesota lakes over 10 acres. Another factoid my wife told me is Minnesota has more acres of natural wild rice than any other state in the country, who knew? It is harvested in the fall, and even a nonresident can harvest it with a license. How does one harvest rice? Okay I digressed.
We are thankful for Troy and Karen’s generous hospitality and their offer for a return visit. Oh, but check this out…in a Deja vu sort of way, as we were driving out of their driveway, Ann Marie got a Facebook Memory from 5 years ago, to the exact day, when Ann Marie and I visited them enroute to Alaska with our Cedar Creek in 2017. Is that crazy or what? Well, can’t be crazy, sounds like a good plan.
Virgil and I are checking the weather daily, and then we decide on a route to take. Nothing is set in stone, other than being in Bellingham, WA by the 8th of May. There we will stay at a campground for our final shakedown before we board the Blue Canoe on 11 May.
Our priority is to stay on state roads through rural towns instead of interstates. Before we left we decided not to travel on Hwy 2 from Grand Forks, ND as they got dumped on with snow. So we stayed “south” taking MN10 to I94 to Fargo.
With the head wind, Bigfoot got 8.9 mpg and Elkhorn had an impressive 11.2 mpg. Since I’m writing about that, Bigfoot has a 34 gallon fuel tank and Elkhorn has a 48 gallon swimming pool of diesel. Bigfoot has to stop for fuel while Elkhorn still has a couple of hundred miles to go. But so far, the Elkhorn has accompanied Bigfoot to the diesel feeding trough, so we refuel together.