Minnesota and current

Determined to follow-up my other post with another timely and prompt post...

After the disgruntled jaunt through South Dakota, I was looking forward to a change of scenary. Alas, it wasn't meant to be. Upon entering Minnesota, we parked overnight in a Walmart parking lot and were immediately hit by ANOTHER emergency weather broadcast and a hellacious storm. In this case it was a devilish case of wind and extreme rain. The wind was rocking our trailer to a degree which made us both very nervous. We cowered inside the trailer and during a particularly bad ruckus, Whitney burst into tears and wailed "it's a TORNADO!" At which case I had to tell her to stop screaming and pull herself together all the while scared to death that it WAS a tornado because our county was on tornado watch! Very stressful. Next morning we went to the gym to take showers and what not and when we got there, we couldn't use our electronic key pass. Come to find out from the lady inside, the systems were down because they were struck by LIGHTNING. Mind you, the gym was 3 blocks from where we were parked.

Here the humidity reached a fever pitch and was pretty miserable. We camped in a place called Blue Earth -- at their fairgrounds which was quite nice with hookups. Unfortunately the heat and humidity made it impossible to really enjoy ourselves. Next morning we boogied out to Minneapolis and caught the last closed-captioned showing of Harry Potter Pt. 7 Pt. 2 and LOVED it! The following day we headed to Mall of America.... which, as expected was a mall. But we were really disenchanted with the huge amount of people that crowded it. We snapped some pictures of the awesome Lego statues and left, continuing on to greener pastures.

We drove out to Wisconsin where I found a free place to park at the Wood Lake County Park. It was a nice enough place with a swimming area but when we got there it was packed. So we boondocked for the night until people dispersed Sunday evening. Then it was just us and one other trailer, which we parked next to because of safety and because our spot was private enough to set up an outdoor shower. WE proceeded to be EATEN ALIVE by mosquitoes no matter how much bug spray or bug repellent incense we lighted. The humidity was also terrible and after our third day we got pummeled by more lightning and thunder. At this point we were also getting a little creeped out by our trailer neighbor. In the 3 days we had been there we hadn't seen a single person come or go and all the trailer windows were opened. We began to entertain ridiculous notions of someone dying in there or something. On the 4th night we got hysterical. Walking to the bathroom meant being in PITCH darkness as lightning raged overhead. On our way back, I couldn't even bring myself to look at the trailer and scene shots of Texas Chainsaw Massacre began running through my head. It didn't help that Whitney swore she had seen someone in the woods outside our trailer with a flashlight. By the time we got to the trailer we were terrified and spent a night in complete agony, unable to sleep due to the bugs and the head and the thunder. The next morning we abandoned our spot and fled for Rib Lake where we found a nice, well-lit campground with hookups for $15/night.

We proceeded to fall in love with this little town of Rib Lake. It has all the amenities we need, including wi-fi spots, a laundromat, a homemade hand dipped ice cream parlor, a coffee shop, a mini farmers market.... and a beautiful lake next to a cemetary. We've been here for over a week and are planning on staying another week. This weekend is "Ice Age Days," an annual carnival thingy and on Saturday, the nearby town of Tomahawk is having a 4-H Show.

Next, we'll be off to CHICAGO!