Saw some of these, and not much else (not my photo though)
After a night’s sleep in a bed to rest my stiff, sore body, I woke up to find that the rain hadn’t stopped overnight, so I was thankful I’d stayed in the hotel. With nothing but the Great Plains of North and South Dakota between me and Minneapolis, I knew it was going to be another long day. I continued the journey with the trusty overalls and rain jacket that Alex had graciously let me borrow. The rain let up by midday so I was at least able to dry out for the afternoon while soaking up some sun. I covered a total of 600+ miles going across parts of the Dakotas and Western Minnesota, but finally reached Nick and Christy’s place with an extremely sore bum sometime after 8pm (lost an hour due to time zone change). The 1300 miles I’d covered the previous 2 days had worn me out and while I was glad to see Nick and Christy again, I was asleep by 10pm even though it was a Saturday night.
I took it easy for a couple days choosing to mostly walk rather than explore much of the Twin Cities on wheels. My hosts live in a diverse community where there are dozens of ethnicities heavily represented, including a large Somali population. It was wonderful to eat some great food, meet some new folks, visit my old roommate and his wife, some other friends I hadn’t seen in years, and some cousins that had grown up way too much since I’d last spent any time with them. But, the date of my interview, which was the only thing that put a limit to the time I had for this cross-country expedition, was approaching too quickly. So I couldn’t stay long enough to help Nick and Christy move into or fix up the house they’d just bought and settled on the day I left… and it did need quite a lot of work. (At least that’s the excuse I gave to get out of helping.) Even though it took a lot of effort and all their extra time for awhile, I’ve seen pictures that show just how much they were able to do to turn the place into a nice, comfortable home.
My tour of Minneapolis
As I left Minneapolis, I headed towards Chicago which I’ll pick up with in the next instalment. But a couple of hour visit in Rochester on the way allowed me to meet the newest addition to Sarah’s family as she, Kyle, and Josiah had recently welcomed beautiful baby Briella into the world. Josiah loved the motorcycle, so even though he’s only 3 years old, I let him take it for a spin while I played with his Fisher Price toys. Ok, so his mom decided that it wasn’t a good idea to let him drive as it didn’t have training wheels. But we did get to play ball in the yard and I pushed him around in his Fisher Price racer. And that is where this edition of the Blue Mamba Trail will end.
1 comment:
We were happy to have you here for a few days!! I'm glad that you are posting these updates, so we now you are still hanging in there!
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