Oregon Trail: Michigan to South Dakota

Monday was a necessary evil: a 12-hour long travel day designed to give us plenty of time later in the week to explore the best of South Dakota. To set up later in the week, we needed to get from Michigan to South Dakota, crossing Wisconsin and Minnesota in the process. I picked our route via St. Paul MN where we would cross the Mississippi River to avoid the Twin Cities and crossing the river there. I really just didn't want to deal with that again, having made plenty of trips there in the past to work with a customer in Coon Rapids. No thanks. Not again.

This post is just going to be a few snaps and anecdotes from the road; we didn't do anything touristy on this beastly travel day.

We got up really early because Charlie was going off like an alarm clock several times during the night at the slightest noise in the hotel, despite wearing his bark collar. Dog, enough! It was still dark when I took them out the side door of the hotel for a pee and on arriving back at the door from our little walk-about, we saw this very strange sign, very strange from the perspective of someone only recently removed from Virginia.

Not in Virginia Anymore

Every few miles in Michigan, we'd see a snowmobile sign alongside the road, your typical yellow diamond warning sign with the outline of a snowmobile on it. It took a few such sightings for me to realize that the signs indicate snowmobile crossings, where a snowmobile trail and the hard surface road intersect. The snowmobile crossings in Michigan are a special surface aimed at keeping the snowmobiles from damaging the road.

Seriously, We Mean It!

Rolling along Lake Superior west towards Duluth, we saw a bunch of deer and turkeys in the morning mist. And suddenly, a big grey lump sitting on a fence post: a Great Grey Owl. Near Trout Creek MI, we saw a couple of ravens in the road working on some carrion. As we approached, a bald eagle in fourth-year plumage swooped down across the road and languidly made a pass at the carrion. Compared to the ravens, already decent-sized birds, the eagle was immense. I say fourth-year plumage because it still had a few streaks in its white hood and not the fully white hood of adult plumage.

The further west we traveled, the more the countryside returning to farming. In one vast field, round hay bales in stark white covers were strewn about the field looking just like giant marshmallows. We finally crossed into the Central time zone in the western UP and then crossed quickly into Wisconsin, still following the southern shore of Lake Superior towards Duluth.

Hello Wisconsin!

We crossed the St. Louis River from Superior WI to Duluth MN in late morning and then started heading south toward the Twin Cities. Heading cross country north of the Twin Cities, about noon, we crossed the Mississippi River in St. Cloud MN. We thought we had been in farm country to the east of the Mississippi, but what we saw in west central and southwest Minnesota would show us what grand scale farming is all about.

Crossing the St. Louis River into Duluth

Hello Duluth!

Across the Mississippi, we entered the land of unbelievable corn and soybean fields, miles long, the table-flat landscape dotted every 10 minutes with massive co-op grain elevators. Harvest hasn't really started yet, but is close: the soybeans are yellowing and the corn is looking very close. The railroad switch engines were hard at work all along our route staging hundreds of BNSF hopper cars by each massive grain elevator. No doubt a lot of the corn is destined for the ethanol industry. This is such a contrast from the northern spruce forest we went through this morning along the southern shore of Lake Superior.

Grace's Favorite Thing About Traveling

We popped out the very southwest corner of Minnesota, where Iowa and South Dakota meet it, on I-90 just east of Sioux Falls, our destination for the evening. En route, Ann googled for beer and from our choices, selected Hydra Beer Company, located in a strip mall just off I-29. After being in open farm country all afternoon the juxtaposition of being in a major metropolitan area was nearly mind boggling.

Finally, South Dakota!

Hydra is a heavy metal theme brewery that makes really good beer with metal-inspired names such as Death Breath, Unholy, and Immortal. You can almost picture Lemmy at the bar chugging Bourbon. Or Jack Black wandering in. We had a great time with these guys on a slow Monday night. Our bartender and one of the other guests, on hearing that we were visiting South Dakota for the first time, without prompting, grabbed a pen and paper and put together a list of things that we should do and see while we were in their amazing state.

Heavy Metal Beer at Hydra

As we started ticking things off their list, we started seeing just how good a list it was, starting with JL Beers burgers for dinner. JL Beers is a small beer and burger chain with locations in ND, SD, and MN, with two in metro Sioux Falls. On our way to the hotel, we stopped in and got a couple of burgers to take with us, it being pretty late and us having an early morning. The burgers were awesome and I don't say that lightly.

We would start ticking off the rest of the list in the morning. We owe these two guys we met in a death metal-themed brewpub a great debt of gratitude. Their list would send us to amazing places in South Dakota.