A Chilly Travel Day

It was below freezing when we got up this morning.  The furnace was set to maintain 58 degrees overnight and I set it to 68 when I got up.  It struggled to warm the RV up.  Even though it’s a small space, a tin can like this still loses heat from every pore.  The floor is cold, the windows are cold, everything feels cold.  I can understand why we see very few RVs on this northern route at this time of year.  It’s much easier and warmer to go south.

The parking lot where we stayed overnight serves as a commuter parking lot and also a trailhead parking lot for the Duluth Lakewalk, a walking/bike trail that follows the shoreline of Lake Superior for several miles.

We got on our best cold weather gear and ventured out for a three-mile walk on the Lakewalk, heading towards downtown.  Lake Superior roared at us from just a few feet away, the water crashing on the rocks below us, driven by the brisk wind.  That same wind cut through our clothing and made us thoroughly cold.  But it was a delightful walk, nonetheless.  The sun was starting to peek through the clouds, making for a brighter day than yesterday and it’s always fun to hear the sound of the surf.

We ended up at Leif Erikson Park, an outdoor event space whose stage was made to look Scandinavian, in honor of the 10th-century explorer.

On our way back, we stopped at the Rose Garden, which is a part of Leif Erikson Park, but just across the street, which is actually Interstate 35.  A skybridge connects the two together.  During the high season, this park sports over 3000 rose bushes and other plants, and I’m sure it’s used for many outdoor weddings, since the gazebo in the park overlooks Lake Superior.  Even at this late time of the year, some rose bushes were still bravely blooming, waving in the freezing wind.

We hiked back to the RV, careful to avoid the ice patches left by yesterday’s rain, and made a mug of hot chocolate to help us warm up.  There’s something about quaffing a mug of hot chocolate piled high with peppermint whipped cream on a cold day.

On the way out of Duluth, there was snow on the roofs of many houses and even by the side of the road.  We were glad it was just a dusting and not the five to eight inches that was predicted where we had come from yesterday.

We left US-2 and drove west on State Highway 200, which goes nearly directly to Fargo, North Dakota.  As we drove west, the sun broke out and we saw Minnesota’s own version of fall colors.  Not the brilliant reds and oranges that we saw in the UP, but more yellow from birch leaves.  Combined with the white bark of the birch trees, it was rather beautiful.  It was hard to take a picture from a moving vehicle, however.

One other thing I remember from driving across the plains states:  wind.  We were buffeted by a cross wind that made driving challenging.  We stopped for lunch at a roadside park on Leech Lake and the wind was stirring up breakers on the water, which crashed noisily on the shore.  Kind of nice to watch this all from inside the RV, with the heat on.

There are a couple things we didn’t expect on this trip.  The first is the availability of fresh water.  We are finding that many places that would normally have fresh water (campgrounds, RV parks, and the like) have shut down for the winter, or are still operating but without water.  You can dump your holding tanks, but there is no water to refill the fresh water tank.  Deb spent quite a bit of time looking for water as we were driving, finding a possible place and then calling them up, only to find that they closed for the winter on October 15, two days ago.

She finally found an RV park in Medina, a tiny town just off of I-94 where the guy said that all the water at the campsites had been shut off but there was still a spigot on the bathroom building that could be used.  So we made for Media, first stopping at a rest area for dinner and taking a shower before refilling at the campground in Medina.

I took a picture of my navigator, busy navigating.  Note the featureless landscape of North Dakota in the background.

The other thing I discovered is also related to the cold. I thought I found a clever storage place for the water hose and a large extension cord.  There was just enough room in the generator compartment to coil them up and stuff them in.  It take a bit of a push, but they seat nicely in there and out of the way.

What I didn’t expect was that, at 32 degrees, vinyl and rubber become as hard as steel.  Getting the hose out of the compartment to fill the fresh water tank was surprisingly difficult.  And then the hose refused to uncoil so I could actually connect it up.  I managed to use it to fill the tank, but the same difficulty in reverse happened when stowing the hose back in the compartment.  Note to self: try to find a hose that is still flexible in freezing temperatures. 

We may be in a bit of a race to outrun the cold weather, but we will still stop for kitsch.  We bypassed the world’s largest buffalo sculpture, figuring we’ll add it to our “worlds largest” collection next time we pass this way, but we did stop to take a selfie with Paul Bunyan in the little town of Akeley, North Dakota.

We finally stopped for the night in Bismarck, North Dakota at a Cracker Barrel.  The weather forecast calls for a low temperature of 16 tonight, so we prepared for this by stopping at a Walmart and picking up a package of ice cream bars, then stopping at a Culvers and having a concrete mixer.

472 miles covered today.  If it wasn’t so cold, we probably would have stopped at a few more places, but we’ll keep driving until we find something really interesting or until it warms up.