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Friday October 18, 2002
We made it! Theresa's flight was delayed by 2 hours due to lightning and
rain in Dallas/Fort Worth but finally Karen and Theresa got together at
Minneapolis/St. Paul airport. We drove to our hotel, a Hilton Garden Inn in
Eagen, with a stop at Wal-Mart for 2 six-packs of water and a cassette-CD
converter for the rent car. |
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Saturday, October 19, 2002
Breakfast was included with our hotel, so we had that (eggs, hash browns,
and other hot stuff in addition to the usual continental stuff) and then hit
the road for Fargo about 10:00 am. |
Albany was a picturesque
town on the side of the highway, so we exited, drove around, took pictures
of the golf course and Seven Dolors Catholic Church (and cemetery with all
drak headstones and an old orphanage and convent).
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Then we were back on the road to Alexandria. |
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the Carlos Creek Winery (in spite of the backwards set of directions Theresa
got on the phone) where we shopped and took a lot of photos. |
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We stopped in
town at the Old Broadway Food and Spirits. The food was decent, the setting
quite picturesque, but our favorite part was listening to conversations of
the people at other tables and marveling at the Minnesota accents!
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Brandon (A town, A town, now B town, hmmmmm) for gasoline and a bathroom
break. It, too was another cute little town. We made one more pit stop at a
Citgo station (A, B, C, . . . ). You could see it right off the highway, but
they were replacing the bridge and so we had to go WAAAAAYYY out of the way
to get there. About 3 miles down the road from there we crossed the river
and made it to North Dakota. We did a U-turn to come back in again and take
pictures of the "Welcome to North Dakota" sign. |
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Finally we
arrived in Fargo and headed straight to the Civic Auditorium for the last
hour of "The Big One" -- a really nicely done little craft show. We spent
way too much money on stuff we didn't need and had a blast doing it. |
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| Checked in at
the Radisson downtown. We made reservations for dinner and the theatre and
then set out for dinner. The restaurant we picked was in "modern" Fargo
(that was our term for it) as opposed to the old downtown where we were
staying.
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It was a good
30 minute drive (including the short detour in the wrong direction). We got
to the restaurant and realized it was just the lobby restaurant of a chain
hotel. Yuck! So we called from the parking lot and cancelled our reservation
and then went back to old downtown and drove around. In driving around we
crossed the river and drove a little in Moorhead, MN before returning back
to Fargo and the theatre.
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The Fargo Theatre. Ahhhh. As it says on the postcard: "Built in 1926, this
fully restored 870 seat Art Deco theatre features classic and first run
film, live theatre, and a four manual Mighty WurliTzer theatre pipe organ.
The Fargo theatre is on the National Register of Historic Places.
www.fargotheatre.org"
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What a show!
The first half of the show was a re-enactment of a night at Hollywood
Canteen during World War II complete with an Armed Forces Radio announcer,
25 piece big Band, singers, celebrities (Abbot & Costello, Humphrey Bogart),
and dancers. The second half of the show was the 1926 silent movie "Orchids
and Ermine" starring Colleen Moor, a native of North Dakota, and accompanied
by the WurliTzer theatre organ! The movie was Mickey Rooney's debut at age
6. Theresa called Mother and Daddy and left messages including a long one of
the theatre organ playing in the background.
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It wasn't too
cold, or at least it didn't feel that way. But it was definitely cold
weather when the show got out. We drove back into Moorhead to the Red Bear
Grill and Tavern for dinner.
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There was karaoke in
the bar in the front of the restaurant but we were seated in the back
overlooking the Red River of the North. The WPA built it with donated local
granite. It was an American Legion Hall for ~50 years and is now a national
historic landmark.
The food was pretty good, too. ;-) |
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Sunday October 20, 2002
We drove around town for a little bit and took photos, but finally had to
leave.
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We made stops at a grocery
store,
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the information
center at the state line,
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a truck stop (that had
been closed a LONG time), a truck stop in Rothsay, the Big Chief truck stop
(by now it's snowing),
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Fergus Falls (we only
stopped long enough to take pictures out the windows),
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and finally at Keely's
house in St. Paul.
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However, we must comment
on Rothsay where we were greeted by a VERY large statue of the
prairie
chicken. It was quite a surprise to see this giant fowl on the side of the
road. )
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The sign proclaimed
Rothsay as "The Prairie Chicken Capital". So glad we stopped at the truck
stop. And yes, they had postcards of the Prairie Chicken. ;-
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| Karen dropped
Theresa off at Keely's house and then went to the Mall of America. We met
Paul on the street as he was leaving with the four older kids to take them
to the indoor arena at St. Thomas University (where he teaches) because they
were getting cabin fever. That left several hours for Keely and I (with baby
Lucy sleeping in Keely's papoose) to visit and yack while making a 3 layer
pumpkin spice cake for her church group that evening. The kids and Paul came
back and I broke out the package of dominos that I had brought (and the book
which I had purchased). I then taught Clare and Paul how to play. Matthew
was my partner and sat on my lap the whole time. He kept helping me by
picking out new dominos from the stockpile. He liked the ones with lots of
dots (pips as they're officially called). That really helped Paul and
Clare's scores! Katie joined us near the end and she sat on the other half
of my lap. She liked to pick one and just hold it, asking each turn if she
could play her domino yet. |
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Mall of America
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Three hours flew by
quickly and soon Karen arrived and we were off to Elaine's house. Upon
arrival she introduced us to Lucy, her cute dog, and her 3 new kittens:
Chip, Augie, and Gus. |
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We toured her
beautiful house
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and then went to Broder's Pasta Bar for dinner. It was
quite yummy, especially dessert. Elaine gave us a driving tour of the very
nice homes on the lake front before taking us back to her house,
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where we tried to teach an
old dog (Lucy) some new tricks. Well, actually, "Bang" and "Say your
prayers" are old tricks, but they were new to Elaine and to Lucy.
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| Monday October 21, 2002
Lucy spent the night with Karen and Theresa on the sofa hide-a-bed. Kittens
slept with Elaine. Theresa got up early to chat with Elaine before she left
for school. Then Karen and Theresa showered, took pictures of the kitties,
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and packed and left
for Wisconsin.
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We had breakfast at Arby's in Hudson, Wisconsin (the modern part of the
city). Theresa got free postcards at the travel center as well as directions
to the Cady Cheese Factory.
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We drove 30 miles
to Cady and saw the cheese factory through the glass window.
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Next it was on to
Menominee where we drove around and walked around and decided not to stay
for lunch. We did stop at the Mable Tainter Memorial building
because it was a warm place to get a break from the cold
outside and it was a fascinating looking building. Theresa picked up some
literature about Laura Ingalls Wilder and Caddie Woodlawn, both of whom
lived in the area. |
We also saw the University
of Wisconsin Stout at Menominee which was named for a Senator Stout.
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drove back to Hudson and this time found the old downtown. We enjoyed
walking around and then eating lunch at Barker's Bar and Grill. Theresa had
a bison burger--quite yummy. We walked down the main street, went to a
tourist/antique shop where we didn't find any tourist items we wanted (or
any antiques for that matter), a local pharmacy (where we did find souvenirs
we wanted), a quilt store that turned out to be more antiques than quilts,
and Alley Jax -- "an infiusion of art and whimsy". It actually was quite a
fun toy store/ children's clothing store.
Then we had to hurry back to the Minneapolis St. Paul airport. We checked
in both our bags and got boarding passes, then drove (forever, it seemed) to
the nearest (????) gas station and filled up the rent car, and then drove
back to the airport and turned in the rent car. Our concourses weren't very
far apart so we looked around at a few shops and then made plans to get to
Oregon in the summer of 2003 so that Theresa could obtain (attain?) her 50th
state.
THE END Prose by Theresa, Photos by Karen |
