There’s a strange cosmic connection between Seattle, WA and Duluth, MN or at least Minnesota generally. A large contingent of Duluthians have moved to Seattle including the core of my long standing Burning Man camp, Buddhacamp. And likewise I’ve…
Day 314 – The SPAM Museum (Austin, MN)
August 20, 2020
Where I grew up, SPAM was considered a ghetto food. I mean I grew up poor on bologna sandwiches but my mom wouldn’t buy SPAM. I probably started eating it as a backpacking food in highschool where I developed…
Day 313 – The Grotto of Redemption (South Bend, IA)
The Grotto of Redemption Believed to be the largest grotto in the world, Father Paul Dobberstein, a German immigrant, began building the shrine in 1912 after promising the Virgin Mary to build it if she healed him from an…
Day 313 – Porter Sculpture Park (Montrose, SD)
August 18, 2020
Porter Sculpture Park About 30 miles west of Sioux Falls in the middle of corn fields near Montrose, South Dakota, you pass the silhouette of a 60 foot, 25 ton iron bull’s head welded together from railroad tie plates….
Day 313 – The Corn Palace (Mitchell, SD)
August 16, 2020
The Corn Palace The Corn Palace is a concert hall / sports center in Mitchell, SD, that is decorated with elaborate murals constructed from different colors of dried corn. Each year a new theme is chosen and murals designed…
Day 311 – The Badlands
August 15, 2020
For over 11,000 years the badlands region of South Dakota has been inhabited by native people. The soft sedimentary layers of soil once under a body of water are easily eroded, currently at the rate of 1 inch per…
Day 310 – Wall Drug and Dinosaur Park
August 14, 2020
There’s not much to see on the drive across South Dakota. Fortunately enterprising folks have been constructing roadside kitsch since the newly created National Parks drew visitors from all over after the turn of the century. Today there’s a…
Day 304 to 309 – Driving through the Black Hills: Devil’s Tower, Deadwood, Mount Rushmore
August 13, 2020
We drove into the Black Hills setting off from Little Big Horn. An island of Ponderosa pine covered granite mountains and hills rising up out of a sea of flat farmland on all sides. The granite was pushed up…
Day 301 – St. Xavier, Montana – “My lands are where my dead lie buried.”
August 9, 2020
I’m sitting in a small hunting cabin in St. Xavier, Montana in the middle of the Crow reservation, population: 83. We dipped down off of I90 at Billings across a dry landscape and flat farmlands. We hadn’t given it…
Day 295 – Grand Teton National Park
July 28, 2020
[Mile 1,820 to 2,200 ] Directly below Yellowstone National Park sits Grand Teton National Park. The two parks nearly touch but are separated by a narrow stretch called the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway. Exiting the south…