Monday, September 30, 2013

Ashland WI to Grand Forks ND

Here is a main thing I learned about Michiganers: Upper Peninsula residents are called Yuppers. The rest are called Trolls because they live below the bridge.

This gigantic bridge is not in Michigan but in Duluth MN. It is the famous Aerial Lift Bridge, where one may see many great barges, many tourists, the bridge lit at night, a festival celebrating the bridge, and a museum dedicated to the great and crazy Army Corps of Engineers.

I am qualified to call those and all engineers crazy, when the need arises, because my father was one, and he could not be argued with regarding things that engineering could solve, ie: all things. I love him anyway. Happy Birthday, Dad!

It was the Corps that straightened the Mississippi River, thereby ensuring floods every spring.

 Today, Monday, Ed and I began to see that the tantruming ideologs seriously intended to shut down the US government. We decided, over the phone, to keep moving forward, 
hoping reason would somehow prevail. 


The plan had always been that I would drive west to the Rockies and Yellowstone NP, a magical place neither of us had ever been brought to see as children nor reached during our own mid-Continental adventures during the '60s, 70s and 80s. I left Syracuse on Friday, September 27 and planned to have enough time to look at a few things along the way in Ontario, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana.


 Ed would fly out to Jackson Hole WY via Chicago and Denver on the following Saturday, October 5. We would be right next to the park, rather parks, for Grand Teton NP is right there too, and would go in, ready to be amazed, the following day. 






 The Frank Lloyd Wright Gas Station in Colquit near Duluth, the only gas station Wright designed. It was originally called the R. W. Lindholm Service Station. 







  Big Fish in Bena MN

 Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue OX in Bemidgi MN
Buffalo on the Campus of Bemidgi State University

I like Bemidgi very much. I met several very kind and interesting people there. Also, like Oswego NY, only people who love the cold north live there for long. My kind of place. 

1 comment:

  1. An amazing bridge structure. I don't think I've seen it before, though I was only in Minnesota as a child. I do remember the Paul and Blue statue though.

    Had no idea that Michiganders thought of themselves along those lines....

    ReplyDelete