June 8 - St. Paul, Minnesota

This was the day we started our long, hard climb back to being in shape for the Volksmarches to come. It is amazing and really quite discouraging how out of shape I could get by just one week of sitting on my butt! That is something I think non-walkers just don't really understand--why people who exercise really have to keep it up regularly rather than just do it occasionally or when it's convenient. The one time I hurt my knees jogging, for example, was after I had layed off a couple of weeks and then went out and did my normal long jog. That time my banged up knees took literally months to heal.

In any case, we drove over to St. Paul, Minnesota, parked near the starting point for our walk, found the box with the walk directions, and signed up. The first part of the walk was east through several blocks of boutique type stores. The stores reminded me of the sort of shops you sometimes find in a "campus town" adjacent to a university or college, but I don't know if one was really nearby or not. We saw the first of the "Snoopy on his doghouse" statues there and others when we arrived at the science museum downtown, so I expect that St. Paul is doing the same type of charity benefit with these statues that Hamburg was with the Hummel figures (see Wanderung 5).

Jogging over a block, the route passed by a series of nice brick apartment buildings. I saw one sign advertising "classic" apartments and two signs advertising "historic" apartments, and I wondered which designation would pull in the most prospective renters. If it were a case of buying an airplane, I would definitely opt for having the "historic" or antique one rather than just a "classic", but I'm not sure I would feel the same about renting an apartment. If "classic" means "old" and "historic" means "older than dirt", I think I'd choose the former type of apartment to live in, wouldn't you?

When we arrived in downtown St. Paul, it looked quite respectable and gave no hint of the seediness we had heard rumors about. Passing Irving Park and some historic homes we reached the Mississippi riverfront area and were rewarded with a grand view up and downstream. From the river we curled around the downtown core area and passed by a couple of theatre complexes plus the Fitzgerald Theater where Keilor staged "The Prairie Home Companion" show, an old favorite of ours.

Our next stop was the Minnesota Capitol building that lies on a nearby hill overlooking the downtown area. It was a classic style of Capitol resembling the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., but featured a gilded statue some guy on a chariot pulled by four horses above the entrance. We didn't take the tour so I am not sure which mythical figure the statue represented, but it certainly was an eye catcher.

From the Capitol building we crossed a bridge and walked over to St. Paul cathedral before heading back on Summit Street past some more of those big, beautiful mansions from the late 1800s. James Hill, a railroad magnate of the late 1800s, built the biggest one, probably St. Paul's first "scraper". The real estate term "scraper" is slang for the case when a purchaser is really just buying the lot; typically the old house is completely razed and the purchaser builds a brand new, usually much bigger, house on the lot, and that is exactly what Mr. Hill did with this lot, according to the plaque out front. The net result, in my opinion, was a 30,000+ square foot plug ugly pile of rocks.

Although not impressed by sheer size and extravagance of the Hill mansion, I did like some of the other mansions along the "mansion row". Several had very intricate and nicely painting trimming, pleasing form compositions of window, brick walls, and roof, or simply nice landscaping and color combinations. All in all we felt this was a very pleasant city walk with the mansions, the riverfront, and the Capitol to keep people interested during the walk. I think tours of the Capitol were offered, but we didn't take to time to join one, which may have been a mistake in retrospect.

Figuring that I had earned a good lunch and hoping for a two-scoop sundae, I called the number for the Culvers located in St. Paul and found that it was just off of I-94 on our way back. Hurray! We stopped there for lunch and I had the Philly Cheesesteak (Monika had the beef pot roast sandwich I had last time). We both opted for the mashed potatoes rather than the French Fries, which I think was a far healthier choice from the low-fat standpoint. We also shared a two-scoop fudge sundae with the flavor of the day, "Black Forest", a custard containing Bing cherries and hunks of brownie, I think, which was definitely NOT a healthier choice from the low-fat standpoint! How much do I like Culvers? Well, never in my life have I ever called a fast food joint to find out where they were so I could drive there for a meal! But it really was not a typical fast food joint; I mean, they had real fresh cut flowers in bowls of water on each table and even in the men's washroom! Neither of us can remember being at a fast food place with real cut flowers on the table, and we liked the touches like that and the friendly folks who came around to drop off your food and also take your tray when you had finished eating. Monika had even filled out a Culvers' "Senior Discount Card" which entitled her to a 10% discount on everything!

Feeling guilty but very satisfied after the meal, we stopped off to refuel the truck and plan our next move. We had found that filling the truck was much easier without the Tin Blimp hanging off the back--we really just could not get into and out of many gas stations with the trailer attached--so we tanked up without the trailer whenever possible. Besides, gasoline in Minnesota was about 20-25 cents a gallon cheaper than across the state line in Wisconsin, something they omit to mention on those large, fancy signs that greet you on the border. Can you imagine a truthful sign that would say, "Welcome to Wisconsin where the hunting is good and the gas is dear too!"

We decided to drive back to camp using the backroads after we crossed the border to Wisconsin in order to get a better feel for the countryside. We both enjoyed just tooling along at about 50 through the gently rolling green hills and farms of that corner of Wisconsin--very picturesque. Just outside of Spring Valley where we had purchased groceries the previous day we ran across the entrance for Crystal Cave and decided to give it a whirl, especially when we found out our AARP cards entitled us to a $1 discount!

The tour of the cave lasted about an hour, during which we walked through three distinct levels. Our guide described the history of the cave since its discovery in the late 1800s by a couple of teenagers chasing a squirrel on their grandfather's farm, and also described the process that formed the cave and the stalactites and stalagmites at the lowest levels. At the upper levels we saw some interesting rock formations including the usual shelves and columns. One unexpected bonus was seeing one of the last hibernating bat hanging there. The guide said that four distinct species of bat hibernate there every winter while the cave is closed, but most of them have awakened and moved out by late May to feed on insects for the summer.

Crystal cave is a "live" cave, by which I mean the water is still percolating down through the soil and very, very slowly building the magnificent formations we saw at the third and lowest level of the cave. These were beautifully delicate structures including spires, columns, and sheets of calcite deposited over thousands of years. I was having a field day trying to get flash and natural light snapshots of it all with the result that I was usually "tail end Charlie" but I tried not to hold up the tour too much. We had the obligatory short period of "total darkness" and that spooked the kids on the tour a bit, but no one got too scared. Besides, it was refreshing being in the 49 degree cave for an hour when we had just finished a walk in the 80 degree heat!

Our final stop of the day was a cheese factory and store on the way back to camp. It was too late for the self-guided tour--the clerk recommended that we come before 2 p.m. while the cheese was being made--but we bought almost 2 pounds of various sorts of freshly made cheese. As you just about might guess, given this wealth we had cheese and crackers for snack and meat and cheese sandwiches for dinner! I especially liked the vegetable version of Monterrey Jack cheese; it was not spicy but still had a nice light flavor from the veggies, almost like a cream cheese except more solid. After checking the weather on the evening TV (cooler but intermittent showers were forecast for the next 5 days), we turned on the air conditioning to alleviate the 65% humidity and settled in for a relaxing evening of crocheting (Monika), writing (Bob), and reading (both of us).