July 4th, Blue Mounds State Park, MN

Tuesday, July 4, 2006
Day 9
Drive to Blue Mounds State Park, Minnesota

Today was our longest day of driving. We drove from Wisconsin through most of southern Minnesota. We are about 2 exits from the South Dakota border. Today we drove 385 miles in less than 7 hours. It was pretty close to what I estimated it would be. We had a few interesting stops. The first was the SPAM museum in Austin, MN. That place was really cool, and I don’t even like SPAM. We even bought some SPAM there. Admission and parking were free, and the place was empty, I guess due to the holiday. A little while later we stopped at the 60-foot tall Jolly Green Giant statue in Blue Earth, MN. That was a really quick stop, but enough to take photos and stretch our legs.

Minnesota is a beautiful state with vast stretches of farmland unlike anything I’ve seen before. The fields are much larger than the ones in Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. I was excited when we crossed the Mississippi River into Minnesota, but it was pretty anti-climactic. Rodney and I took turns driving today, since it was pretty much a “straight shot” on I-90. I’ve never seen so little traffic in my life, even on route 17 in upstate NY! Miles and miles of very few cars, with a mainly flat and straight road to travel on… easy driving!

Blue Mounds State Park is pretty deserted. We had to “self register” since there are no staff here and I was tempted to just drive to our pre-reserved site and skip the $7.00 vehicle fee, but didn’t. After a fast dinner of hamburgers and hotdogs, we walked over to the bison range to see the bison, and boy were there a lot of them! We also saw a deer out on the prairie, so now Rod has seen a deer (or more than one) in each and every state we have been in so far. We also saw a lot of bunnies out in the fields and paths we were on. By the time we got back to our campsite it was almost dark and we all sat outside and had our own little 4th of July celebration with the glow sticks that we had brought with us and the fiber optic light up things that I bought for the kids way back in May.

Brianna is a little sad that we couldn’t go see fireworks, but we did watch the Boston fireworks on television. She likes to do the “traditional” things that we always do, and this year is a little different. I told her to remember that this is a once in a lifetime trip and that she is very lucky to be able to do this, even if it isn’t what we “usually” do.

Tomorrow we are off to Kennebec, SD. It should only take us about 3 ½ hours, so we are going to go for a hike in the morning here at Blue Mounds. Hopefully we’ll see the cliffs and then head out. Tomorrow we’ll be at a KOA, and that is when I’ll post all these journals up on the blog and also do laundry…yuck!