Why am I now in Minnesota?
Since the last post, several people have asked me why I’m driving the boys across the USA! It’s a good question and deserves a good answer. What’s even better is that I will make the answer relatively short today.

The boys are involved in another hockey tournament, this time in Duluth Minnesota. As their father is in the process of opening a new factory in the Greater Phoenix Area (GPA) and their mother is starting the new school year in the same general locale (teachers start a week before the students), it was a challenge to get the boys from the hockey school in Penticton to the tourney in Duluth. As I have made this trip in a variety of fashions since I was a young kid when my father used to take us on cross-country vacations, I volunteered to drive them in the SUV (so we could carry the equipment as well).

Then as I was planning the trip I realized that I could also do a bit of university visiting to get the kids starting to really think about life after high school (they all are entering Grade X this month). I managed to get in contact with an old friend from graduate school days at the U of Minnesota and discovered he had spent his entire honoured career at Gustavus Adolphus, a highly rated liberal arts college in Minnesota. He helped set up a complete tour/visit for this morning, including some time with the hockey coach!! Then I located another good friend from my Minnesota days and he helped me make contact with the U of M hockey department — we will visit them this afternoon. Once in Duluth I’ll see about that campus too. I’ll tell you how it all goes later.

As a result of these extra-curricular activities, I took I-90 out of Billings and showed the boys parts of Wyoming as well as South Dakota before getting to Minnesota. Due to GPS not linking me to a short-cut, I actually got to see part of Minnesota “southern back country” as well. We still arrived in time (thanks to speed limits ranging around 130/140 km/hr which I love) for the boys to have a swim in the hotel pool last night so all is good. The drive yesterday was much like southern Alberta — some badlands, lots of prairie with “cattle on a thousand hills”, evidence of oil production (including 2 refineries in Billings alone), and great vistas… then the big maize fields began in South Dakota (not long before Mitchell, home of the Corn Palace) and on into Minnesota (by the way, Minnesota is making a huge investment in Wind Farms). It shows more of the similarities between the Prairies (Canada) and the Great Plains (USA) than our differences. We are now in St. Peter which is a delightful town and it’s breakfast time. Will talk more later…

g.w.