The Adventure Has Begun

Lift Off!
Saturday was crazy, moving my furniture out of the apartment into the neighbor's, loading the last stuff into the RV, cleaning my apartment, returning the keys, then, finally, in the afternoon, getting in the RV with Menominee and leaving the apartment complex for the last time. We had met our deadline — Saturday, June 30, the last day of the month, the last day to be out of the apartment.

A couple of errands and we were on the road! Drove aimlessly on back roads, generally northward, to get out of the city heat. Crossed the Mississippi at Anoka, made it to Cambridge by early evening, and decided to stop there. A kindly manager at Cub Foods gave permission to stay overnight in parking lot. Whew! Time to start decompressing!

Next day, it was still hot and humid as we drove northward. By the time we got to Jay Cook State Park, just short of Duluth, it had cooled off, so we spent the night there. Gosh, it got cold! In the middle of the night I had to find a warm blanket and huddled under it the rest of the night. It occurs to me that the coldest July 4th in the continental U.S. just might be in Duluth.

Continuing northward, Hibbing beckoned, so we slanted over in that direction. By the time we got there, I was really hungry for lunch, so we stopped at the Hibbing Visitor's Center. There, a nice little white-haired lady was generally cheerful as she resisted my attempts to extract a recommendation of a restaurant for lunch, directions to it, and the location of a Caribou Coffee shop. But we finally found Zimmie's and had a delicious lunch there. (Recommended.) Turned out that Caribou Coffee was on the highway outside town near the new Lowe's and Walmart, a spot the Visitor's Bureau lady probably had never visitied. Bought dessert and got the first free Wi-Fi Hotspot of the adventure! Whoo hoo!

Potica
In Hibbing they make potica. It has nothing to do with politics or poetry, and is pronounced po-TEE-sah. It's a "traditional European-style sweet bread," deliciously sweet and tasty, and I enjoyed it for breakfast and dessert. You can walk into a Hibbing grocery and find potica in the freezer, $9.95 for a pound, made by Sunrise Bakery. In the Twin Cities, you might be able to find it at a specialty shop.

Ely
We had had no difficulty leaving any of the places we stayed until we got to Ely, which turned out to be so nice that we spent three nights there. Clean, dry air, nice temperatures, low humidity, pines all around... ahhh! Many of the people there looked outdoorsy, tanned, fit, relaxed, happy. The high point was an Independence Day parade through town, featuring the town fire engine and a squad of Girl Scouts portaging canoes. The International Wolf Center was interesting too. Returned again and again to the Front Porch Coffee Shop and Internet Cafe (Recommended) for free Wi-Fi (with a purchase). Stayed in Fall Lake campground (Recommended) in the National Forest a few miles east of town, where Menominee loved to go outdoors on her leash and explore the campsite. It was here, in campsite 40, that she stalked and chased her first National Forest brown squirrel. A scooter would have been wonderful here, riding the few miles from the campground to Ely.