On this day I discovered a way to make the miles fly by. I had been doing most
of the driving so far on the trip but on this day I prevailed on Daisy to drive
while I typed in my travelogue. After a while Daisy stopped in Fargo and I was
amazed to discover that we had already traveled 200 miles. After gassing up and
getting lunch, we got back on the road and in what seemed like an instant we
had traveled another 150 miles. At 4 PM we only had about 85 miles to go.
Unfortunately, I had failed to see much of the landscape for the previous 350 miles
but on those rare occasions when I did look up I seem to recall it was green
with gently rolling hills. And lots of lakes. At least after we entered Minnesota. There must be 10,000 lakes there!
This was the first day that temperatures hadn't risen above 90 degrees. In
fact, the warmest we saw was 86 degrees. I'm not sure if that's because of all
the lakes or if the whole Midwest was cooling down, but even as the weather had cooled a bit, the humidity had increased a lot.
About 40 miles out of Minneapolis, we ran into traffic for the first time
since Salt Lake Cit. It was 5 PM on a Sunday, and I'm not sure why there was
traffic at that hour. Maybe it's people coming home from church or something.
The traffic wasn't that bad - it occasionally slowed to about 30 m.p.h. and then sped up again.
Minneapolis has a beautiful skyline, and it's obvious that a lot of thought has
gone into designing the downtown area.
We pulled up to the Marriott, and a bellhop helped me with the bags while Daisy parked the car. After checking in I called Daisy on her cell to tell her our room number. By the time she found her way back from the garage the bellhop had arrived with the bags. It turns out that the Marriott is laid out in an incredibly confusing manner. You have to go in at the ground floor, go up to the fifth floor, walk around the lobby to the other side of the triangular tower, and catch another elevator up to our room. When I took an architecture class in high school I made the mistake of designing a triangular building and my instructor chastised me for using a shape that makes such inefficient use of space. If you've ever tried to place furniture in the corner of a triangle, you will be acutely aware of the space inefficiencies in a 60-degree corner.
As we were wending our way back out of the hotel I performed an informal survey
of some of the people that we rode with on the various elevators. The results
were unanimous: the architect should have been shot.
We went for a walk down to the Mississippi River to take in the scenery. At the
river, we wandered down past the mill ruins, and these were no run of the mill ruins…
Then I went over and watched the lock system in operation. Daisy followed in lock step.
The Mississippi River has a series of waterfalls, and the Army Corps
of Engineers constructed an extensive lock system to allow ships to travel up
and down the river. In addition, the old limestone waterfalls have been
completely replaced with a massive concrete spillway so that the city wouldn't
lose its hydraulic power.
It was hot and muggy, even at 7 PM, and although we considered crossing one of
the bridges and having dinner at a restaurant on the other side, we chose
instead to hurry back to our room so that we could catch "The Wire" on HBO. We
ate in and the room service prepared a surprisingly good meal - especially for
room service.
The Marriott had broadband internet access available so we took the opportunity
to book our hotel for the following night in Chicago. For some reason,
Priceline couldn't find a three or four-star hotel for us with our usual
discount of 40% so we eventually had to resort to using Orbitz, and we had to
settle for a four-star hotel fourteen miles north of Chicago, in Evanston.
Based on that sobering experience we took preemptive action (in typical American
style) and booked our rooms for the French Quarter in New Orleans, and Orlando, while Priceline could still find rooms that met our criteria.
