Today we go to Duluth
for Rachel’s run tomorrow. I got up at 6 and struggled to produce a
report on where lightning took place yesterday. Sherri got up at 8
and then we went our for breakfast at EggFlip.
EggFlip is one of the places which you can only access through the
Skywalk.
It is within the same block as where we are. Obviously the food
served is egg based. I have Coll Guy Bacon while Sherri has an
Eggvacado and Rachel the Flip. It was pretty decent fast food type
stuff.
Tree along road
When we got back, we were ready to check out of the Indigo. They will hold our bags while we pick up the car. At 9, we walked to Enterprise, about three blocks away and got our car. We will be driving a 2026 Mazda CX-5. It will be interesting to drive a different car. By 9:45 we park in front of Hotel Indigo and retrieved our luggage. Then we are off.
Rachel takes up the driving. She has her phone hooked into the car’s display so she can see the navigation. There are other things about the car which we discover. Such as some of the information is projected on the lower part of the driver’s windshield so you can see things like speed, fuel status and turn information. I think this car will take a bit getting used to.
One thing got me excited along this drive is I saw a sign saying Hinckley. Four years ago, the OSHER Book Club read Under a Flaming Sky by Daniel James Brown about the great fire of 1894 which Hinckley was the epicenter of destruction. Rachel asks me if I wanted to stop. There is an inner yes, but I also realize that I needed to do a lot more background checking before we made this stop, so we continue on.
Rachel drove out of Minneapolis to the Culkin rest stop, about 30 miles outside of Duluth. There she turned over the steering wheel for me. I drove into Duluth and directly to the run’s exposition at the DECC Center. Apparently this is really popular as there was at least a half an hour traffic backup just to get into the parking lot.
Once in, we just wandered the
exposition hall. Not much was interesting to me. There was a Boundary
Waters booth advocating preserving the area around the waters from
mining. The interest I had was that our friend Don did a trip in the
Boundary Waters. He loaned me a book called A
Year in the Wilderness: Bearing Witness in the Boundary Waters
by Amy and Dave Freeman where they stayed in the Boundary Waters for
one continuous year to draw attention to saving it. We stayed about
an hour and a half before moving on to our hotel in Proctor.
More trees, which we wondered, what are they?
We checked into the AmericInn at Proctor, a Wyndham property at 2:45. It is a nice room with a king sized bed and a sofa bed. The carpets are a bit worn, but the room is comfortable. There is a jacuzzi in the room. None of us are that adventuresome to try it. We did find out that the hotel has a shuttle to take runners over to the pickup point where another shuttle will transport them to the starting line.
We rested most of the afternoon. Rachel went swimming and I went for a 25 minute walk. I do not think anybody was in the frame of mind to find a place to eat. So we went to Black Wood Bar&Grill which is next door to the hotel. Turns out there are several of these along the North Shore as well. The prices seemed pretty reasonable. Sherri had Mac&Cheese; Rachel Swedish Meatballs and I had a Chicken Pot Pie.
When we got back to the hotel room, Rachel went to bed. She will be getting up before 4am, that is 2am California time. Sherri and I have adjusted to Minnesota time and go to bed at 10.
No comments:
Post a Comment