We spent part of a day at Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park. Rich in both military and early Native American history, Fort Abraham Lincoln was once an important infantry and cavalry post. It was from this fort that Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and the Seventh Cavalry rode out on their ill-fated expedition against the Sioux at the Little Big Horn. Portions of the military post, including the Custer House, have been reconstructed.
There are also reconstructed earthlodges that depict the lifestyle of the Mandan Indians, who occupied this site from about 1575-1781.
Next stop was Fargo. Fargo is right on the border of North Dakota and Minnesota with the Red River of the North dividing Fargo from Moorhead. With over 90,000 folks living in Fargo this is definitely the largest city we've been in for about 3 months. We stayed for 2 nights at the city campground. This also was a nice park right on the river.
While there I took a deep breath and bought a new camera at Best Buy. A Canon Rebel Digital SLR. My very first SLR camera. I've always used a point and shoot but really had gotten frustrated with it's limitations. And I had just plain wore out my Olympus. With the new camera I have a lot to learn. I've been reading and have more to read to learn to use even half of the features on it. I'm enjoying the challenge very much.
We left Fargo last Monday. On the way, we had another tire blow out on the house. These Tomax tires have got to go. This one blew a hole in the sidewall bigger than my fist. Fortunately Gary saw debris flying from the tire and got us stopped pretty quick. He changed out the tire for our spare and we went onto the Grand Casino RV Park in Hinckley.
We've had trouble finding a replacement tire. And because we had some slight damage to the wheel well, dealing with the warranty company has been a bit of a challenge. We finally found a tire in Carlton about a hour north of where we're staying and drove up there last Friday. The tire store put the new tire on the wheel and we brought it back to the house. We decided to go ahead and have the same company change out the other 2 tires too. We've gone to Goodyear Marathon tires. No more ToMax tires. They had to order those so we made an appointment to go back up there as soon as our mail arrived here. Then, yesterday Gary was looking at the tire we already had (not on the house yet) and realized that they had given us the wrong tire. It was a D load tire instead of an E. So..back on the phone with the store. They had to order the replacement tires from the factory since no one in Minnesota has these in stock. Hopefully they will be in on Monday and we can get them installed and travel on into Wisconsin. We really didn't plan to stay in Hinckley for almost 2 weeks, but that is the advantage of our lifestyle. We can be pretty flexible usually about moving or not. This area is very rural and quiet. The only excitement is winning at the slot machines in the casino. Which we've managed to do a little of..better to stay away from those one armed bandits. All though not to many machines have the arm to pull anymore.
On Sunday we drove down to Minneapolis and Saint Paul. These are large and busy cities even on Sunday. We went downtown and toured around. There were several beautiful churches. We also went through an area called Summit Hill. The homes there are many years old and quite impressive. We didn't see the bridge that collapsed last year but certainly saw the results with the traffic being detoured around. Fortunately there are several other bridges that cross the Mississippi there, but I know the folks will be glad once the new bridge is finished. From the signs we saw this should occur sometime in November.
On the day we went to get the tire we also traveled up to Duluth. This town is located at the westernmost tip of Lake Superior, halfway between Minneapolis/St. Paul and the Canadian border. Downtown there is a park right on the lake. We spent several hours walking along the shore line enjoying the views and talking to others doing the same thing. Miss Ellie enjoyed the walk and visiting as she got lots of rubbing and pats. We saw 1 extremely large barge anchored off shore and many other boats coming and going. There is a famous bridge called the Aerial Lift Bridge. We watched it go up and down many times to allow boats to travel under it. The city is built into a steep, rocky cliffside; almost mountainous. This made for some interesting travel up the streets from the lake with impressive views downward. There are extensive, climate-controlled skywalks that connect downtown facilities. Since the average low temperature in January is -2* these probably come in handy.
We went to Park Point beach. It is the world’s longest natural sand bar, jutting seven miles into Lake Superior. I walked in the water..it was just a little bit cool with an average temp of 40*.
No comments:
Post a Comment