Day 71 -- La Crosse, Wisconsin to Springfield, Minnesota -- 228 Miles

Okay, first the rant. I've been sitting here eating breakfast and watching (and listening to) my fellow humans begin to stir near our camp on a pretty back-bay estuary along the eastern banks of the Mississippi here in Wisconsin. The first guy to draw my attention was a Harley rider who, presumably, wanted to take a shower at the park facility. So did he grab his soap and towel and walk over to do that? NO! He cranked up his barely-muffled Harley at 6:30 a.m. and rode the 150 feet to the shower building. While he was in there, another neighbor exited his rig, climbed aboard his bright red golf cart, and rode an even shorter distance to the bath house. Then, moments later, our neighbor on the other side of us fired up his sputtering, gas-powered golf cart and repeated the "journey" of his two lazy predecessors.

Okay, I know that most people my age don't have perfect hearing, but surprisingly I do. So the auditory reality of my fellow humans doing whatever noisy thing they can do to avoid exercise, even while supposedly getting out into the camping wilds to, well, exercise, just makes me crazy, especially this early in the morning.

And this is not the first camp we've been in where the the golf carts are as thick as fleas on a mangy hound dog. It seems that the little menaces are the new "in" thing to bring to camp. Why walk all the way to the dumpster with your trash when you can ride the fifty feet there and back. Or, why try to entertain your grand kids that you took on vacation when you can just hand them the keys and tell them to have a "nice time." After that, said kids can be seen circling incessantly through the park until the battery runs down, or they run out of gas.

I know I'm probably sounding a lot like Edward Abbey in those long-ago days of environmental hypersensitivity, but dang it, why do we all go out into the woods to experience the sights and sounds of nature when you can't see those sights for all the equipment, nor hear those sounds above the constant din of superfluous machinery? Motor bikes? Golf Carts? Jet skies? Motorized surfboards? Ski boats? Blaring TVs and stereos? It's just not right! All those noisy folks should pick up a copy of Edward Abbey's "Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness" and learn how one should act when one ventures into nature's sacred domain.

Since there are probably at least one of my three or four readers who don't know who Edward Abbey is, I include a few lines from Wikipedia by way of explanation: "In 1956 and 1957 Edward Abbey worked as a seasonal ranger for the United States National Park Service at Arches National Monument (now a national park), near the town of Moab, Utah. Abbey held the position from April to September each year, during which time he maintained trails, greeted visitors, and collected campground fees. He lived in a house trailer that had been provided to him by the Park Service, as well as in a ramada that he built himself. During his stay at Arches, Abbey accumulated a large volume of notes and sketches which later formed the basis of his first non-fiction work, Desert Solitaire."

"Desert Solitaire, Abbey's first work non-fiction (he wrote 3 novels), was published in 1968. In it, he describes his stay in the Canyonlands of southeastern Utah from 1956-1957. Desert Solitaire is regarded as one of the finest nature narratives in American literature, and has been compared to Aldo Leopold's, 'A Sand County Almanac' and Thoreau's 'Walden.' In it, Abbey vividly describes the physical landscapes of Southern Utah and delights in his isolation as a back country park ranger, recounting adventures in the nearby canyon country and mountains. He also attacks what he terms the "industrial tourism" and resulting development in the national parks ('national parking lots'), rails against the Glen Canyon Dam, and comments on various other subjects."

Here's one of Abbey's quotes: "...do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards."

And I agree! We should all get out there and explore the planet. But for God's sake, DO IT QUIETLY!

Speaking of quiet, we mostly had an uneventful day today on the road. I had picked Minnesota Route 14 for us to follow when we left La Crosse, Wisconsin, which worked perfectly. For the first several dozen miles we just cruised up the west bank of the Mississippi, just enjoying the bright morning sunlight and the tranquil sight of lone fishermen as they sat in boats waiting for their next bite. The scene was so serene it made me wish that we were planning to follow the old Father of Waters all the way to where it was born as a tiny stream far to the north. Someday we'll just have to do that.

All too soon Route 14 hung a sharp left, climbed the steep bluffs west of the river, and emerged onto soft rolling tablelands where field after field of lush corn plants stretched away toward the far horizon. The vistas were beautiful and impressive, especially in the beginning when the country was more rolling.

Unfortunately, we soon grew tired of all the corn, which was only occasionally punctuated by strawberry plants and hay. Maybe it was our imagination, but we began to suspect that we were looking at the same tidy farm with well cared-for house and barn and surrounding flawless fields. It was as if we were imprisoned on some giant cyclorama and the same scenes just kept spinning by our window every few seconds.

Trying to break the spell of flawless Scandinavian and German farm husbandry, we took to stopping in the tiny towns that we encountered. In mid morning we stopped in the town of Saint Charles and parked next to a large, copper-roofed church that had been turned into a boutique. I just had to get out and walk a bit, I told Concetta, and she agreed that sounded good. So, leaving the RV, we set out down main street, cameras in hand, and ended up walking about eight blocks through both commercial and residential areas. Every few minutes someone would drive by and wave, and we'd wave back. At one point even the local sheriff waved as he drove by.

I'm absolutely fascinated by middle American towns that date back to the previous turn of the century and before. They all look about the same, with red brick buildings lining each side of a two or three block area, the better ones adorned with Greek pediments and columns, and nearly all with obvious vacancies every few doors. Over many of these once stately buildings one can see the embossed date of construction, most times anywhere from the 1870s to the 1920s. It's obvious that the entire street suffers from deferred maintenance or outright neglect. Many of these architectural treasures are just waiting for the next calamity to render them completely useless.

After our mid-morning walk, we ventured back out on the road and watched the same farm go by for another two hours. Finally, about lunchtime, we pulled into the town of Kasson and parked on a very shady side street in front of an opulent-looking Victorian (photo above left). We were a little shy about leaving the rig in front of such a stately mansion, but we got over it quickly. We had our lunch in the coolness of the verdant trees, then set off for another walk to discover if there was anything unusual about Kasson that your average reader might want to learn about. There really wasn't -- well, except for the photo right that I call, "Still life with Concetta and flower urn against a blue fence -- but we had a great time walking another six or eight blocks through the nicest of Kasson's residential neighborhoods before returning to the rig. Thanks to the huge trees overhead, the RV had stayed nicely cool though the outside temperatures hovered in the mid eighties and the humidity was about 65%.

Naturally by now, we knew we had to provide some entertainment so we didn't have to concentrate on watching the same farm cycle by us every few minutes. We plugged in a James Patterson novel about murder and mayhem, which sounded like it had been written for fourth graders, and suffered through that for a couple of hours. Fortunately the first disk in the series ran out soon enough and we went back to watching the corn.

Until we got to the town of "Sleepy Eye." Although we entertained no ideas of stopping, as we rolled down Sleepy Eye's main street, my photographer's eye suddenly caught something interesting on the marque of a local theater. I immediately pulled over and told Concetta I'd be back. Grabbing the camera, I dashed back to grab the shot. Unbelievably, though we had not seen a single campaign sign for our entire sojourn across Minnesota, there emblazoned on the theater's marque were the words, "Vote Trump."

Back again in the rig, I hadn't driven another block when I pulled over again. This time I'd caught sight of the Peanuts character, Linus, clutching his blanket and holding a heart that bore the words, "I love Sleepy Eye." He was standing in front of the local library. Heading back to the rig yet again, I noticed the gas station in front of which I had parked. The pump canopy was all done up in red, white, and blue and bore the words "FREEDOM" in two-foot high letters. This just keeps getting better and better I told myself. By now I was beginning to think that the day wasn't a total loss after all.

Our avowed target campsite for the night was located in the town of Springfield, Minnesota, which showed up in the Good Sam book and didn't sound like it would cost a fortune. We allowed Jezebel to do her best to find the place, and of course she failed yet again. But before that happened we did have one more surprise coming our way. Just as we rolled into the city limits of Springfield, I spied a whole collection of vintage vehicles atop a small hill on the north side of the highway. Stopping the rig once again, I grabbed the camera and sprinted through the wet grass back to where they were sitting bathed in the soft afternoon sunlight.

Why wet grass, you ask. Well, as our camp host told us when we walked down to the community center to pay our $25 space rent for the night, there was one heck of a storm in Springfield last night. We had been seeing the effects of the storm most of the afternoon as we drove. Whole trees -- very large trees -- had been ripped up by the roots and tossed aside. Everywhere we looked, people's yards were filled with severed tree branches and other debris. The camp host told us that the town had lost power, had gotten bucket loads of rain, and the winds had gotten as high as 60 miles per hour. And, she went on, the town just to the north had experienced 85 mile an hour winds.

Our camp tonight experienced some of the broken tree limbs, but none of the campers had been prompted to cut the weekend short and go home. In fact, when we drove in we couldn't find a single place to park at first. We stopped and asked a fellow camper if he knew where an empty space might be found, and he directed us to one he knew about. I suspect, since the camp host told us that the tenant who had reserved space 36 had failed to show for the weekend, that we only got our space tonight because the storm scared the future tenant away. Lucky us!

So here we are. The air conditioner is running non-stop since it's too darn hot outside to hang out comfortably. And even if it wasn't ninety degrees outside and 65% humidity, the bugs would drive you indoors after only a few minutes if you ventured out. But that's okay. We've had a nice dinner, the blog is well underway, and things turned out better today than we had hoped. Tomorrow we're continuing on Route 14 until it crosses the border into South Dakota. There we hope to make a few fascinating discoveries to tell you about. And while you're waiting to hear about them, we wish you Happy Travels!