Woke up to this view out the front windshield
Everyone abandons North Dakota after Labor Day. I wonder why, the weather's great!
Didn't have any spares, but I borrowed one from another camper, then stopped in an auto parts store on my way out of town to buy some more spares.
It was windy. If I said that the northerly wind while driving across South Dakota was bad, I take it back. The southerly wind driving across North Dakota was much, much worse. About 25-30 mph most of the day. I wonder if I were somewhere right along the ND/SD border if it would have been quiet :-)
At some point yesterday I drove through some construction site, and unfortunately, the left side of the motorhome, trailer, and BMW are covered with this pasty light-colored dirt. The right side of the motorhome, trailer, and BMW are relatively clean, but have streaks of black tar. Yuck. I thought today I'd try to find a truck wash to get the motorhome washed. The bugs on the front are pretty disgusting too. The windshield is okay, since I wash it when I fill the fuel tank, but the rest of the front is gross.
I found one truck stop along the way with a truck wash, but there was a line of 5 trucks. I decided not to wait.
The wind was excrutiating. My arms and fingers were beginning to get tired, just from holding onto the steering wheel. I had to hold it at about a 30 degree angle most of the time, but had to correct for gusts almost constantly. I stopped for lunch in Bismarck, the capitol, and realized that I was really getting tired.
As I neared Fargo and the MN border, I stopped at a rest area and tried to figure out where I might stop for the night. I-94 takes a turn to the SE towards the Twin Cities, but I wanted to head due east towards Duluth and Michigan's upper peninsula. There are no interstates to the east. The routing software I use had me taking a fairly circuitous route through 2-lane roads. I didn't want to get stuck in another Montana situation, so I stopped at the MN welcome center just across the border to ask what the best way to get east is.
Well, the recommended route is a different route than the software recommended. It's US-10 to Brainerd, and then route 210 up to Duluth. I forced the software to take that route, then looked at campgrounds along the way. Unfortunately, Brainerd looked further away than I really wanted to go, especially with the wind, but there was a dearth of campsites on the near side. It looked like the best option was going to be about an hour east of Fargo, in a town called Detroit Lakes, MN. It's in the middle of some of the 10,000 Minnesota lakes. Actually at the welcome center, the sign said there were nearly 15,000. Why do the license plates only say 10K, I wonder?
The campground I chose is actually at a golf course. The RV sites are situated kind of right in the middle of the golf course. When I pulled in, they offered me a golf cart to go out and evaluate the sites and pick the one I wanted. Very nice!
While they have nearly 100 really nice sites, none of them are long pull-thrus, which I need if I don't want to detach the trailer (and I don't). So, I picked site #45, a quite ugly but perfectly serviceable, non-shady site. Non-shady is actually good if it's as windy as it was earlier, because the trees are really loud!
I hooked up and unloaded the BMW. I thought I'd head back to the clubhouse, get my e-mail (if Marimba's e-mail woes had been corrected), get some dinner recommendations, head into town, wash the car, eat dinner, then head back to camp and spend the time I wouldn't normally have collating the Nationals Pick-The-Winners contest results. I stupidly set up this contest to predict the winners of the Nationals, and over 300 people entered, and now I need to figure out who won. It's a simple matter of programming, but I'm on vacation!
Anyway, by the time I got back to camp and sat down with the computer, it was almost 9pm. By the time I finished reading all of the e-mail that I hadn't been able to read for the last 3 days, it was 10pm. And I wanted to type this up before doing the picks contest ... It's now after 10pm and I'm too tired to write code! :-) Oh well, another day of procrastinating. I can do that on vacation, can't I?
Anyway, so no sightseeing today, just some pictures of last night's campsite. Tomorrow morning, if the weather is good, I'm going to hit the driving range here before I hit the road. I'm at a golf course, after all. And I'm now in the middle of the land of 10,000 lakes, so there should be some nice view spots on the way. I actually should make it to the Great Lakes tomorrow, so more photo ops.