Km 3,213 - Manistique, Michigan

Since my last entry, things have started to feel like a road trip. After arriving in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Area Monday night, we spent Tuesday touring the cities with our guide, Terry. We stepped foot in the Mall of America and got a driving tour of the University of Minnesota (Terry's alma mater). As agriculture is big in Minnesota and surrounding states, the university has a large agriculture school. Similar to the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, this results in cow barns and test crops in the middle of the city. I mentioned to Terry how nice it would be to have a house in the city with a massive cornfield out the front door. He said that there is a townhouse complex that is marketing this exact idea.

After a nice visit (although brief), we headed north to Brainerd. The Brainerd area contains over 500 lakes and is known as "up north" to the city folks and is a popular cottage area. We stayed for a night in this area before heading out. Yesterday, we headed up to Duluth. It is quite a nice city situated on the far west corner of Lake Superior (touted as the greatest of the great lakes). Because of its location, it is a major shipping port. They have taken an area along the water that was formerly a run down dock district and converted it to a hip tourist area with lots of shops and restaurants. I wish we had more time here, but we did spend an hour. We headed over the bridge into Wisconsin and through to the upper peninsula of Michigan. We ended the day late and set up the tent in the dark. Today is a big day so we were up at 5:20 am and packed in 30 minutes. It is now 10am and we just caught site of Lake Michigan.

We've had a busy few days on the road and are ready for a break. Today, we are heading to Traverse City in the lower peninsula of Michigan and are planning on spending 2 nights there before heading briefly back into Canada.