When I tell most people that our family of 6 took an 13 day road trip across the United States and into Canada, the response I get most often is "Why" or "On purpose." However, it was an amazing trip and I am so glad we did it (well most of it). I shared a good bit on Facebook and Instagram as we traveled, but I finally had time to add a little more detail to the story.
Day 1
Allen and the kids set off on the first leg of the trip. I was in Kansas City, MO for a work conference so I missed this part of the trip. The goal for Day 1 was the north side of Oklahoma City. When a family of 6 travels you can't always just plan to get a hotel somewhere. I also like to know exactly what is going to happen so I tend to plan and reserve everything in advance. Allen and the kids arrived in Oklahoma City late in the afternoon and settled in to relax.
Day 2
I had rented a car for my coworker and I while we were in KC, so I had to work out how to return it. We had planned that my coworker would return it when she flew home on Friday morning. However, due to a family illness, she had to leave early. I decided that the last thing Allen wanted to do after driving for 2 days was to get back in the car and drive to the KC airport (about 30 miles from my hotel). So after my meetings ended I drove out to the airport and returned the car. I took my first ride in an UBER to get back. I get why people like UBER because it was super convenient and much nicer than cabs I have taken before. Once the rental car was out of the way, I spent the afternoon trying to clear my email box so I would be ready to start our trip when the family arrived. On Day 2 of their trip, they got to experience the Kansas Turnpike which is I-35 but a toll road. Luckily our Texas Tag works in Kansas as well. They got to see a little more of Kansas than we had planned on. Just outside of Topeka there was a car fire that had the freeway shut down for miles. They got to take a dirt road detour across Eastern Kansas. They finally made it to Kansas City just before dinner. We had decided that we had to have KC barbecue while in town - much to Rachel, the vegetarian's, dismay. We went to Jack Stack barbecue - if you are ever in Kansas City I highly recommend it. Then we walked around the Country Club Plaza area of Kansas City.
Day 3
We were all officially on vacation and ready to get to the cooler weather that Minnesota promised. We headed north towards Iowa with our final destination being Minneapolis. There is a lot of open land in northern Missouri and almost all of Iowa. It was pretty, but not very interesting. One of the biggest "adventures" of our trips is finding a suitable restaurant that has a decent gluten free menu. Allen and the kids had eaten Chick-Fil-A a few times already and there aren't too many other fast food options that are safe. We found a pizza place that was rated celiac safe by several reviewers so we decided to give it a try. It was closed - they only serve dinner. So we decided to try another place that was in downtown Des Moines. Once we found a parking garage (another recurring theme on our trip) we walked the 6 or so blocks to the restaurant. This one was open but only had seating for about 7 people. On to option 3. We ended up at Hy-Vee Market Grille which was very good and had a decent gluten free selection. The waitress was very friendly and gave us lots of good information on Minnesota. We got back on the road to complete our drive to the Twin Cities. Iowa doesn't appear to be a large state when looking at it on a map. When you drive all the way across it, it seems to go on forever. We finally reached the Minnesota border and made our way to our hotel. I'm going to do a separate post on the pros and cons of the various hotels we stayed in, but this one was not at the top of our list. Since we had not gotten our pizza at lunch we decided to get pizza and eat at our hotel for dinner.
Day 4
This was the day of walking. We went to the Mall of America in Bloomington. It was quite a place. There is literally something for everyone. There are some stores that have multiple locations within the mall so you have to be sure you know which Bath & Body Works you came in next to. We spent some time in the Lego store and then rode several of the amusement park rides. We got to experience Wahlburgers and it was definitely worth the wait. After walking the entire mall, we decided to explore more of the Twin Cities. It had rained a lot overnight and during the morning, so we debated not going to Minnehaha Falls. I'm glad we decided to risk the mud. It was beautiful and the kids had fun climbing the rocks. We also drove to downtown St. Paul to see the Peanuts character statues. St. Paul was my favorite downtown. The buildings were very ornate and it felt like stepping back in time about 50 years because of the store fronts. The Twin Cities will definitely be on my list of places to visit again.
Day 5
DULUTH
I doubt there are many people who are not from Duluth who are as excited about going there as we were. First of all, the Twin Cities were experiencing extremely high temperatures so it was still in the mid-90s while we were there. So arriving in Duluth to low 70s was amazing. We had two goals in Duluth - see Lake Superior and take Allen shopping at Duluth Trading Company for Father's Day. We left Minneapolis early so we would have a full day in Duluth. When we arrived, they had just completed their annual marathon so there were lots of people downtown. We got to our hotel which was right on Lake Superior and were able to check in early. We decided to walk across the bridge to downtown and then walk to the Duluth store so we wouldn't have to bother with parking. We walked to a pizza place in downtown Duluth, Pizza Luce. The pizza was great - the wait was long. We walked down to the Duluth store and Allen started shopping. While we were looking around the store, it started to pour down rain outside. The Duluth area had gotten a lot more rain the day before than we had in the Twin Cities so drainage areas were already full. Suddenly one of the sales guys yells - "there goes the man hole." The man hole cover in the street outside had just shot up due to the amount of water pressure underneath it. It was quite a sight to watch gallons of water gush up from under the street and cars try not to hit the hole. When the rain lightened up we decided to make a run for it back to our hotel. We made it about half way down the lake walk when it started to pour again. I decided I didn't want to keep running so I stopped a a pavillion while the others ran on. Allen then came back for me with the car. Our run through the rain became a frequent topic of laughter the rest of the trip. The girls, Allen and I all had extra shoes, but the boys did not. We had planned to drive across to Superior, WI so that we could visit Wisconsin, so we set off to find a shoe store over there. Once everyone was dry we went to a restaurant in the old Clyde Iron Works building. It was a great restaurant with lots of atmosphere. Duluth was one of our shortest stays but definitely was a favorite.
Day 6
Before we left Duluth we got to watch the Aerial Lift Bridge in action. Watching the very large barges go through the narrow canal was very interesting. We then set off across Northern Minnesota bound for Canada. Northern Minnesota is much like Iowa - pretty but not much to see. We arrived in Bemidji, MN and stopped to see the Paul Bunyon & Babe the Blue Ox statues. In case you were wondering Bemidji is the Curling Capital of the US. This was our first stop where we struggled with finding gluten free food. We ended up at Hardee's and it was not horrible but they don't get a lot of gluten free requests. Definitely should have packed a lunch for today. We didn't cross into Canada at one of the major check points so we were the only people there when we arrived. The border guard was not particularly happy to see us and seemed annoyed that someone was using his checkpoint. Once we crossed into Canada we discovered how reliant on our cell phones we are. Our plan includes service in Canada, but we didn't have our setting right (and didn't realize it) so we had no service. Southern Central Canada is much like the Northern Plains of the US - lots of corn and other crops, but not much else. Our arrival in Winnipeg was accented by witnessing a pretty severe car accident that included one of the cars knocking over the traffic signal. After hours of driving and then witnessing that we were ready to just be out of the car. We arrived at our hotel and unloaded. We decided to cook dinner in our room that night so Allen and I ventured off to the grocery store. We went to the Real Canadian Superstore. We shop at Aldi so we are used to having to pay for a cart, but we did not plan for needing Canadian coins to do so. Luckily a very friendly woman used her membership tag to unlock a cart for us. The store was really interesting and the food selection was fabulous.I had still not spent time getting my phone to work so trying to calculate the cost in US dollars got interesting. We decided on spaghetti for dinner and bought breakfast items as well. As a frequent shopper in Austin where stores don't give plastic bags, you would think I would have been prepared for this store to do the same. We weren't. We bought one of their reusable bags and carried the rest in our hands. Hotel kitchens are great, but not necessarily stocked for cooking for 6 people. We had to make our spaghetti in stage to make it fit the pots we had. It was entertaining anyway.
Day 7
We had decided to take a walking tour of Winnipeg that we found on the Tourism Winnipeg website. They mentioned coming by their location to pick up a map, so we set off for downtown Winnipeg to do that. I was expecting a storefront or kiosk kind of deal where I could hop out and get the map and be on our way. It would prove to be much more of an adventure. I had gotten my settings changed on my phone so I now had service and could use waze for navigation, but that didn't help with parking. Most of downtown Winnipeg is under construction it seems and we were constantly having to redirect due to a road being closed. We never did find a daily parking area in downtown so Allen found a delivery spot and waited for me to go find the tourism office. I went into a bank building, again still expecting to find a tourism desk, but I was directed to the 8th floor. What I found was the office of the director of Tourism for Manitoba and they were not used to walk-in tourists. I caught them off guard but they were nice and gave me the map I was seeking. After driving around downtown for a long time, we decided to bail on the walking tour and head for Assiniboine Park. We walked through the English garden and had a picnic lunch before heading to the zoo. I think every school child in Winnipeg was at the zoo with us. It was a nice zoo and a fun day. For dinner, we headed The Forks which is a shopping area where the Assiniboine and Red Rivers meet. We had pancakes for dinner along with poutine and went shopping for Canadian souvenirs.
Day 8
Our time in Canada came to an end and we headed for North Dakota. We crossed into the US at a major check point but it was still not very interesting. We made our way to the North Dakota welcome center where there were 3 of the friendliest people we would meet on our trip. They told us all about their state and gave us tons of information. We toured their museum and headed off towards Fargo. We had not planned to do much in Fargo and had actually thought of nixing it from the list to get us home a day earlier, but our hotel in South Dakota did not have room for us a day early. Up to this point we had tried to only eat in local places and avoided chain restaurants we could eat at home, but by this point we just wanted something easy so we went to the Chipotle down the street. The kids had had enough of roadside statues and opted not to venture back into Minnesota with us to see the 40 foot prairie chicken. I wouldn't normally make a special trip for something like this but I had heard about it for years and had to see it just for fun. It was exactly as advertised a 40 foot statue of a prairie chicken.
Day 9
Today was supposed to be another easy travel day with some sightseeing around Sioux Falls. Then we stopped at the South Dakota Welcome Center. I was a huge fan of the Little House on the Prairie series as a kid so finding out you could visit Laura Ingles Wilder's home was very tempting to me. I expected Allen to nix the idea since it was out of the way and I figured he and the kids wouldn't be interested. But he agreed and we ventured out across South Dakota. We arrived in De Smet, SD where the homestead was but couldn't find the place and neither google maps nor waze seemed to know where it was either. So I ventured into the hardware store - which looked much like I imagine it did in the early 1900's. There was a man that was more than happy to tell me exactly how to find the homestead and was very welcoming to me. The sheriff outside wasn't as sure about Allen and the car from Texas loaded with tons of stuff. He drove by several times while Allen was parked outside to be sure we weren't up to no good. We found the homestead and enjoyed the trip back in time to the 1870's. We then drove on to Sioux Falls. After dinner we went to the falls in downtown Sioux Falls. They had been having rain most of the week so the river was very full and in places around town it was over its banks, so the falls were quite active. The park was lovely and the weather was perfect.
Day 10
Today was the longest day of the trip. We decided that if we were in South Dakota we had to go to Mount Rushmore. However, there were no hotels available near there with room for 6 people and we really needed to leave from Eastern South Dakota on Saturday to make it home on Sunday. This meant we had to drive across South Dakota and back in one day. We had also found in our travel materials that there was a national park where you could see remains from the nuclear missile program. It was on the way so we decided to stop there. We had not reserved ahead of time so we couldn't go down in the missile silos themselves but we found the museum very interesting. It traced the Cold War and the buildup and reduction in nuclear weapons. The kids found the duck and cover videos very interesting. Then on to Mount Rushmore. I don't know what I was expecting but Mount Rushmore was surprisingly beautiful and worth the visit. The weather looked threatening so we cut our hike short and after a stop for some of Thomas Jefferson's ice cream (made using his recipe) we drove off to the other side of the mountain to see the carving of Crazy Horse. That was also interesting to see how the Native Americans were using their history to build their future. With funds from visitors to the statue they were not only paying for the statue to be completed but also for the Native American College and other education projects. When we drove back towards Rushmore we found we had made the right call. There had been a pretty major hail storm while we were away and the road side looked like it was covered in snow. We set off back across the badlands of South Dakota and to our hotel.
Day 11
Today was the day we drove through 4 states. We did stop in Sioux City, IA and visited a riverboat museum/ visitor center that was interesting. Otherwise there was not much of interest today. We stopped in Wichita for the night. It was our least successful stop of the trip.
Day 12
HOMEWARD BOUND
Today we woke up to storms and potential severe weather. I just wanted to get on the road and home at this point. We left Wichita early and raced a line of severe weather across Oklahoma. We made it without having too much rain and avoided everything worse. Arriving back in Texas always brings mixed feelings. You are excited to be back in Texas but you realize that you still have a good 5 hours of driving to do. We had several items in a cargo bag on the roof of the Traverse for much of the trip, but due to the high winds today we decided just south of Fort Worth we needed to bring everything inside. No one was in the mood to repack the car and we were just ready to be home by this point, but we got everything shifted and back on the road. We finally arrived home after driving 4982 miles. Overall it was a great trip and I am excited to see where we venture next year, but for now I just want to enjoy being at home.
