We have a knack for showing up on doorsteps late at
night, and the night we rolled into lower Wisconsin was no different. It was around ten o’ clock when we
knocked on the door of Tweedy’s uncle's home (getting in as many apostrophes in a single go as I can manage). I don't know how, but Tweedy seems to have family scattered
all over the country. They had been there for us in previous states and we have
stayed with other family members of his since. All of my family lives out West, so you
probably won’t hear any mention of the three of us staying with my extended
family until we end up on the other side of the country. Just had to get that
out there because it will sound like I’m riding the coattails of the other two
for the next couple months, but don’t worry, my family will eventually make an
appearance.
Tweedy’s uncle lived in lower Wisconsin—Mt Horeb to be
exact. He and Tweedy’s grandfather were kind enough to share with us the
leftovers from the dinner that was prepared earlier that day while we sat around and chatted
for a while before setting up our beds in the basement. The amount of driving
that we had done that day left our legs a little restless, so after we set up
our beds we got back up and went outside to go on a late night walk. It’s funny
how a person can feel so tired and yet remain awake for several more hours just
in order to take advantage of the chance to stretch out the body. And stretch we did. In all honesty we took stretching to the next level by doing a little bit of a
workout routine/set of childish challenges on a playground that was built by
the side of a little lake. (I don’t know if it was technically a lake, but it
was one of those bodies of water that is much bigger than a Coloradan is used
to seeing, in other words to me it was a lake even if the locals thought of it
more like a pond.) These little challenges involved muscle-ups on the cross bar
holding the swings and creating new and difficult ways to cross the playground
equipment. It took nearly two hours but then the wiggles were out and we were
able to fall asleep with no difficulty.
The next morning we awoke and were treated to a breakfast
by Tweedy’s uncle. On top of the breakfast his uncle also sent us off with some
more food to hold us over until we encountered another gracious family or we
broke down and bought some food ourselves (as it is we’ve only had to purchase
food very rarely, in fact the only food we ever “have to” buy are fresh loaves
of bread—people are pretty awesome and giving). After a little bit of
conversation we were back on the road.
I had heard from one of my good friends and dance
partners from back in Denver that there was a good blues dancing scene in
Minneapolis that had weekly blues dancing every Tuesday night, and it just so happened that it was a
Tuesday and it was time for us to head into Minnesota, but not until we enjoyed a little bit of what lower Wisconsin has to offer. This meant stopping off at a
little state park on our way up to Minneapolis. We found a beautiful hike at this park that culminated in a
picturesque view of the Mississippi from atop a bluff that bordered it.
It was a beautiful view, but we did not linger for very
long. The mosquitoes were out and were waging a war against us. I rolled down
my sleeves, popped my collar, and pulled my hat down as far as I could and
still they found ways in and just kept feasting on me. Tweedy and Eric also
collected quite a few battle wounds. I launched an offensive against them as
well, but it was not enough, even when I got over 20 swatted. Their numbers
were just too great, so we retreated to the cars and drove from the swarm, next
stop was Minneapolis.
There needs to be a little insert here. See I am just
going to call all the city activities that we engaged in during the next couple of days as happening in
Minneapolis. The truth is that Minneapolis is just one of two cities that make
up a rather large and sprawling metro area. The other city is St Paul and
together with Minneapolis they make up the Twin Cities area. Still I’m just
going to call it Minneapolis. Hopefully the mentioning of St Paul will keep
locals from getting too angry at me though. Not like everyone reading this will
be able to tell that some of the places I mention are actually in the St Paul
area, but I thought I would tread on the safe side just in case.
Another little note I need to make before I go into the
details of the rest of the night though, otherwise the night won’t seem as
incredible as it was to me. I mentioned in earlier posts that I’m a blues
dancer. There is this funny thing that happens among blues dancing communities—most
of the time the dancers have no idea about the local blues music scene and the
local blues music scene has no idea that there is a blues dancing scene. Denver
does its best to remedy this by inviting blues bands (often locals) to perform
at the weekly blues dance at least once a month, but most blues dancing scenes aren't quite so lucky. I rolled up to the location
where the local blues dancers meet to dance in Minneapolis expecting this scene
to be separate from the blues music scene as well, but almost immediately I began to question my
original assumption.
The name of the joint was Wilebski’s Blues Saloon. People
standing outside the bar looked more like bar regulars than dancers (not to say
bar regulars have a certain look, but dancers are usually pretty easy to make
out, they usually move in groups or—after some dancing—pairs, and they have
this happy glow and tendency to be laughing/singing/moving almost constantly).
Inside there was a live blues band playing, people gathered around the bar in
an adjacent room to the music, and then an empty floor in front of the band. I
looked around with a bit of confusion. I was expecting there to be nothing but
dancers inside, but instead there was no dancing even happening at the moment,
and a live band playing some killer music. Turns out it was the weekly blues
jam night. A jam is when visiting artists can sign up to play together with
other locals. They don’t have to bring a band, just their own instrument, and
then most of the songs are just improvised. For about thirty minutes we just
sat and listened while I waited for the dancers to reveal themselves, and soon
enough they did so. It started with them conglomerating at a booth and then
after some chatting they started to take to the floor.
After getting a decent idea as to who were the dancers I
began to ask different girls to dance and continued to dance until about 10:45,
at which point most of the dancers left. This was a much shorter period of
dancing than I am used to. Back in Colorado the shortest dance was three hours,
and usually I personally try to get in four hours of dancing if I'm going out dancing for the night. But this was just a
small group, and so once they had all danced with each other a couple times they
would just head out and get some sleep so they could function at their jobs the
next day. (Why one needs sleep more than dancing is something I will never
understand) Since I was dancing I didn’t get any pictures, but Eric has already
posted a video that contains a short clip of me dancing.
That night we didn’t have a place to stay. This being the case we had to do some improvising, which began with making dinner on our camping stove in the parking lot back behind the blues bar. To this day that was still the most unique situation in which I have ever prepared a dinner. After eating we headed to
a nearby state park that had a campground and snuck into a campsite that one
usually needs to pay for. Thankfully no one would ever think someone would roll
in to a campsite at 1:00 in the morning on a Wednesday, so we managed to get away with
a free night of sleep before breaking camp and driving back into town to check
out The Mall of America the next day. We figured you can’t be in Minneapolis and not see The
Mall of America. It lives up to the legend of being a giant mall. Though it is
just a mall and none of us were in the mood to spend money since we have such a
tight budget. We did spring to pay for riding one of the roller coasters
though. That’s a rare enough experience that it could legitimize spending seven
dollars.
After the mall it was time to get out of the city and
back into nature, so we drove up to northern Minnesota to camp for the night in
a national forest. We then woke up and drove into Voyageurs National Park. I
have a feeling that most people have not heard of this park because I had never
heard of it and it is free to get into, and only the not-so-well-known parks
have free admission. Here's a brief history
of the park based on the short video that we watched in the visitor's center. It is part of a water system that runs through lakes both in
Canada and the United States and was part of a trade route run by French fur
traders in the 16-1700’s. These fur traders were known as Voyageurs, hence the name
of the park. It is best accessed by boat—the same way the Voyageurs accessed
the area—most of it is either islands or the water surrounding the islands and
they build no roads between the islands for land lubbers like ourselves. We had
to be satisfied with hiking around on the coast while admiring the islands from
afar.
Almost more remarkable than all the islands were all the
mushrooms. There were so many that it would take a slideshow to show all of
them rather than just post four pages worth of mushroom pictures. Thankfully
Eric already has a slideshow of all the mushrooms up on his Youtube channel so
I can focus on the writing. (If you clicked on the earlier link you've already seen them)
There in Voyageurs National Park was also the first time
we tried foraging for food, and what we found the most of was a lichen known as
rock tripe. This lichen is quite dry during the fall season, but after being
boiled in water it takes on a texture like a mushroom and doesn’t have much
taste, so nothing to complain about or write home about (just enough to make a
mention of in a blog). We also tried out the roots of lily pads and roots and
stalks of cattails. Those were not near as satisfying or easy to prepare so we
didn’t use them any more afterwards, but that rock tripe we feasted on and included it in the next few editions of our dinner beans. We also came across a random
trove of old buried bottles and what appeared to be charcoal based bars of
soap. I’ll let you be the judge of what you think those strange black squares
wrapped in red and white plastic are.
That night we went back to the same place we camped the
night before. The next day we woke up and drove into another national forest where we spent the majority of the evening. We did a little bushwhacking and stumbled
across some random animal skulls. One of which we are fairly certain was a beaver
skull and the other most likely was a white tail deer skull. We made a strong
fire that night and put on some pine needles that filled the surrounding forest
with the aroma of rosemary. The next morning we made one of the more ridiculous
meals we’ve made on the trip—fried pickles. After the pickles it was back on
the road and on into upper Wisconsin.
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