Our plans today were to drive about an hour to the Mississippi River and cross the Minnesota State border into Wisconsin. The weather is very cool and overcast with very grey skies which really doesn’t blend itself to getting out there and going for a walk and hence the car ride.
We all loaded into the car including the three pooches and headed out. As you can see, they pretty much slept all the way there and all the way back. These dogs really do it tough. Toque is starting to get a bit emboldened and trying to stamp her place in the pack – at the top. Not a smart move considering she is a guest.
We covered about a 100k loop in total. You can see that we are very close to the Great Lakes and Chicago is only a five-hour car drive away. This area of the country gets some pretty brutal weather from the flat prairies with winds whipping across including the famous Alberta Clipper that they can blame us for. They also get severe weather off the Great Lakes which are huge inland seas.
We have been trying to get photos of the Welcome To….. signs that each state has on their borders but once again, we missed out on Wisconsin. We actually spent some time today on our return, going through all the states that either of us have visited. So far, Fraser has 14 states still to tick off and Di has 13 states to tick off – this is after our trip down to Phoenix. Most of the states still to tick off are down the eastern seaboard which for us are going to be difficult to do, as to get there from Calgary is a huge trip. Up north there is still Maine and Rhode Island and North Dakota and Nebraska in the centre. We will have to see what the future brings.
The photo kind of says it all – cold and windy. Behind us is the Mississippi River but the area is called Lake City. The Mississippi River is the primary river of the largest drainage basin in the United States. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it flows generally south for 2,340 miles (3,766 km) to the Mississippi River Delta in the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi’s watershed drains all or parts of three US States and two Canadian Provinces between the Rocky and Appalachian mountains.
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