Green Bay to Minneapolis

Our Rise and Shine in Green Bay takes place at the Brown County Fair Grounds.  And once again we are off, leaving early and winding through small towns in Wisconsin on our way to Minneapolis.

Acres and acres of corn, grain silos rising up all around.  There must be many Fair Grounds around here!  And the long irrigation systems on wheels out in the fields, looking like dragonflies touching wings end to end.  This countryside is straight out of Garrison Keillor (Prairie Home Companion) and Michael Feldman (Whad'Ya Know), staples of my Saturday morning radio.  "Fudge and Wine Four Miles," one sign says, a bizarre combination.  Our Surprise and Delight is a stop at a small drive-in where they still have curb-service in some small Town whose name I did not record.  This young lady posed for me, pad in hand and ancient coin changer at her side, a piece of vintage Middle America.

And then before we know it we are driving north along the mighty Mississippi River, steep bluffs on our right and the wide river on our left - tugboats, barges, and power plants every few miles along its banks.  We are in bumper-to-bumper traffic in the little town of Stockholm, where there happens to be an art show going on, a hapless police officer directing traffic, hundreds of Minis behind us soon to add to this congestion unbeknownst to him.  We cross the river and pay a visit to the National Eagle Center in Wabasha, right on the river.

At St. Croix Bluffs Park we stop for a picnic and talk to some of the friendliest people we have met, a man and his wife and their grown daughter, a healthy-looking attractive family from Minnesota Norwegian stock who are sharing the same picnic area.  They are fascinated to learn about out trip and about Mini Coopers.  One day soon they will do something like this, the mother says; they have saved all their lives.  Did we inspire them to retire early and travel now while they can?  Don't put it off, we tell them.

Busy traffic as we pass through St. Paul and arrive in its twin Minneapolis and International Market Square.  Then we proceed to Shakopee where we are staying, where it is nice and quiet, a calm harbor in rough seas.  This is one of the cities where there have been demonstrations against the police this summer after the shooting of Jamar Clark, and it is suddenly sobering to see a blackened car upside down in the interstate, the exit before ours, surrounded by emergency vehicles, as though somehow connected to the political disturbances all around us.  How inconceivable it seems that these events can occur not only in Baltimore and Detroit, but right here in Middle American, the land of Norwegian bachelor farmers and Lutherans and cheese.  The highways can be deadly everywhere.

And all I knew of Minneapolis before now was Mary Tyler Moore, throwing her hat high in the air in that beautiful TV city:  "You're going to make it after all!"