After spending so many days wandering through Michigan, I was kind of looking forward to leaving it behind.  Not because it wasn’t beautiful, it was wild and wonderful actually, but I still feel perhaps a bit too driven and want to keep moving.  I also wanted to get my oil and filter changed, and Duluth, Minnesota seemed like the next big town where it would be convenient to do that.

It still took hours of driving to escape Michigan, and in the process I learned that logging is a major industry there, as it is in many northeastern states, and there were a lot of logging trucks on the road.

I also saw what must be one of the few remaining original McDonalds.  (McDonaldses?)

I discovered this artesian well near Chequamegon Bay on Lake Superior, so filled up my water bottles with the most wonderful tasting cold water direct from the aquafer.

But eventually I made it to Duluth, which seemed to be actually a very nice city.  Not too big or small, good coffee, a few microbreweries, and a nice bridge over the St Louis River, which flows into Lake Superior.

Without carrying a significant amount of tools with me, I had been planning on using quick change places for my oil changes and other maintenance, and sure enough I found a Jiffy Lube in Duluth.  The crew there seemed a bit excited when I told them about my trip, and put RainX on my windscreen for free.  Thanks guys!

I enjoyed the fact that a woman with her white hair in a bun was changing my oil and filter, and then realized that she was actually running the whole place.  I have this vague impression that the colder a climate is, the more capable and independent the women tend to be — but then, I’m a northcountry girl myself, so am probably biased!  I snuck a picture of Ellen through the window as she was checking the computer so I wouldn’t look too creepy.

So now I’m running a full synthetic, and Ellen tells me that I can easily go for 7,500 miles without another change, so that sounds good to me.  She also told me that she did a check of the front and rear diffs, and checked for other problems while she was under the car, but as expected in a vehicle that’s practically brand new, everything looked fine.  Good to go!

I spent the night at a campground in Fond du Lac, which turned out to be a bit of a mistake.  First of all, the rather confused owner sent me to a site that was already taken, then gave me a new site, then changed his mind twice after that.  But I finally got settled… and then the jackhammering started at a construction site on a nearby road.  It did stop about 8:30pm, but I didn’t sleep well that night, and believe it or not they started again at 6:30am!  I got up feeling very groggy and headed for the showers, only to have a wardrobe malfunction and accidentally flash a neighboring camper trying to have his morning coffee.  He seemed a bit bemused, although I went bright red, and when I returned from the showers I noticed him talking to another man, the two of them trying to hide their smiles when they saw me.  Sheesh.  I’m usually a pretty easy traveller, but I was so tired that I admit that it was only a half hour down the road when I finally found coffee that I could see the humor in it all!  Oh, well.

With that rather inauspicious start I started heading south toward Minneapolis-St Paul in a thick fog, both mental and environmental, and seemed to stay in that state all day as I vaguely searched for drinkable coffee.

I stopped in Willow Creek for coffee at Peggy Sue’s Café.  Although the people were very nice, the coffee was terrible.  I tried stopping in Minneapolis for a while, but although I found better coffee at Caribou Coffee, I really wasn’t feeling very focussed, and the rain started in the early afternoon.  Somehow all I felt like doing was driving anyway, like moving forward and getting lost in my own thoughts, so the end result was that I drove right through Minnesota and ended up in South Dakota without really having seen or done anything.  I’m sorry Minnesota, I know that I didn’t even give you a chance.  I know that might disappoint some of my friends from the Midwest, but I’m definitely putting Minnesota on the ‘revisit’ list, except next time I’ll have a better plan!