Geez, here’s a surprise.  It was raining when we got to North Dakota!  In case anyone in the universe doesn’t know, this year is Mark’s 50th high school reunion so we are revisiting sites of his education.  First up is NDSU in Fargo.

This is Ma Henski’s house where Mark lived with Larry Hagan, Zeke Gustin, Al Gustin, tand Tom Keating.  Not pictured is the place which is now a crack house where Mark, Tom, and George Gress lived.  This is Stockbridge Hall where Mark and and Butch Ressler shared room 226.    This used to be The Quadrangle but is now a huge construction project, which is pretty much the norm for most of the school. Go Bison!!And this is the ATO house where Mark and his buddies crashed for a couple of years.  Alums, contribute to the housing fund because this place is falling apart!

Off to Mandan now to see family and get ready for the big reunion.  Mark is excited to see all his pals from the olden days.  Me, too!

 I had to download this picture off the internet because I missed the one going across the bridge into Minnesota.  Our next stop was Duluth which is a pretty amazing town, really.  We went on another old train ride up the shore of Lake Superior and then visited the museum in the train depot.  Once again Mark is living out his boyhood fantasies!  This is the operating system for the engine pictured above.  Can you even make sense of it? This is an old mail car when mail was sorted along the way and then delivered to towns along the train route.  In Duluth along the waterfront is a ship canal which leads from Lake Superior into the harbor area.  This light house is at the mouth of the canal.  Ships containing or loading iron ore, grain, wood products, etc. make their way into and out of the canal.  We watched as the Paul Tregurtha, the largest boat on the Great Lakes made it’s way through the Canal. It is 1013’6″ long with a beam of 107′.  It carries over 78,000 tons of ore in a load.  The infamous Edmund Fitzgerald was one of these boats and was only 800′ long.   eThis is the old flagship of US Steel.  We toured it and learned a bunch about this form of transport in the Great Lakes.  The Irwin became too small at 600′ and load capacity of 17,000 tons and was retired in 1975.

next up-North Dakota!!

 Welcome to Wisconsin and just about the last sunny  day we have seen.  In Madison we went to the state capital which is one of the most beautiful we have visited.  We saw a farmer’s market around the base of the capital with more than 150 vendors.  We next went to Minocqua which is a small resort town nestled among the pines  and around a very pretty lake.  And at this point the skies opened up and we sat in rain for four days with daytime temps in the low 50’s and the nighttime temps in the 30’s!  We drove around Minocqua, Woodruff, Eagle River, Rhinelander, and to the casino.  We then watched 15 episodes of Outlander and a bunch of bad movies.  Next we go to Minnesota where they are experiencing floods from all the rain.  Really, we are still enjoying ourselves, mostly!