"I'm looking California and feeling Minnesota." - Soundgarden Minnesota is very cool.  It seems to be a place that engenders alot of home state pride in its residents, proud of their heartiness in the face of the long, brutal winters.  I remember a guy in my dorm in college from MN who had a t-shirt that said, "Minnesota: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Winter, Winter, Winter, Winter..." -- but luckily, I was there in the middle of July to enjoy a couple of long, warm days.  I'd been there twice before: once to canoe & camp in the Boundary Waters in 1993, when I also dipped into Canada, and once for my friends' wedding in 1996 in Minneapolis.  I also went to the Mall of America, that wonderful shrine to consumerism.  This time though, I eschewed the great metropolis and took alot of backroads from the extreme southeast corner to the far northwest corner in a roughly diagonal path.   Minnesota is known for a lot of things -- it's the home of Prince, Hubert Humphrey, and Governor Jesse Ventura; it was the setting for the Mary Tyler Moore Show and the great movie Fargo -- which helped spawn the well-known, oft-imitated proliferation of the Minnesota accent:  "Yah, You betcha, For Sure!" -- I even bought a t-shirt with that exact phrase on it -- Nonetheless, on with the trip...   In Bluff County, Southern MN: is this where Fonzie, Richie, Potsy &  Ralph used to take girls to make out?? (Mile 3914)

After meandering along the southern frontier of Minnesota -- at times along the "Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Highway" -- I came to the town of Austin, home of Hormel Foods, where they make... SPAM!!!!  Yes, I visited the SPAM factory.  They didn't let me anywhere near where the stuff is made, thank goodness, but I did go to the SPAM store know as SPAM TOWN USA.  And they had EVERYTHING you could imagine with the SPAM logo on it.  The staff who posed for the picture below were very helpful and friendly, and unironically, extremely enthusiastically embraced their product -- more power to 'em I say. Becoming a vegetarian never seemed like such a good idea!

Scenes from SPAM TOWN USA (Mile 4101)

The rest of that day was a bad stretch of driving thru heavy rain, up State Road 15.  I spent the night in St. Cloud, Minnesota, did laundry, rested, and enjoyed the indoor pool and waterslide at the motel, along with the great old arcade video games that had (including "Toobin" -- very hard to find!).   The next morning it was beautiful and sunny as I headed for the way,way north.

The next morning, the sun was shining, and the route up through the heart of the state was beautiful -- I visited the Paul Bunyan statue below in the town of Brainerd --  (where the sheriff was from in Fargo).  They take their lakes, fishing, and squeezing every minute out of their short summers very seriously way up here!

Paul & Babe, in Brainerd, MN (Mile 4285)

One of Minnesota's 10,000 lakes north of Brainerd (Mile 4293)

Minnesota scenes: the U-Betcha Cafe (Mile 4312) and a map of the local lakes in
Hackensack (Mile 4327) with car in the background

As I headed north, my goal was Itasca State Park...the home of the Source of the Mississippi River.  I'd crossed back and forth over the great Old Man River several times, but now I was heading for the very beginning of it.  Given the 100s of lakes up there, and the several almost equal-sized tributaries the river splits off into, deeming one particular spring or lake or stream as "the" source is a bit arbitrary and man-made, but nonetheless, for all official purposes, this was it, baby!  Please enjoy the short photo essay below.  It was a beautiful 95 degree day to boot.

The Search for the Mississippi Source (Mile 4380)

At the Source!!!!  "Here 1475 feet above the Ocean, the Mighty
 Mississippi begins to flow 2,582 miles to the Gulf of Mexico" (Mile 4380)

Standing in the middle of the Mississippi!!! (Mile 4380)

Left: the first mile of the ankle-deep baby Mississippi River; Right: the Dirt Road I 
accidentally had to drive on for 10 miles to get to the next destination (Mile 4407 to 4416)

The last big destination in Minnesota was the town of Bemidji -- which bills itself as "the first city on the Mississippi".  Here, I got to see the real, big Paul Bunyan statue -- that's me in the middle!  I also got to visit the lovely campus of renowned Bemidji State University.

Bemidji, MN (Mile 4429)

After that, I blasted west on US 2 toward the border, and was going next to a state I'd never, ever been to before, uncharted territory, that big rectangular, mysterious block on the map known as...

North Dakota!!!!!