Minnesota / Michigan Day 1, July 1, 2023

Today is Sunday, July 2^nd 2023 but this trip began yesterday.  We left DFW at 12:20 and flew to Minneapolis, MN.  The flight was short and easy but for the first time, maybe ever, the airline put us in random seats not next to each other because despite our booking this flight in mid-November, it changed several times and we lost our original seats.  Ryan sat alone, I sat alone and Grant & Nick sat together (because Grant said he didn’t want to sit with non-family members). 

We arrived at 2:45 and should have been able to walk straight to our Avis rental car but the spot the app said our car was in was empty so we had to wait in a long, slow line then finally got a black Highlander with 7 miles on it and got on our way close to 4pm.

We stopped after about an hour and went through a McDonalds drive thru for drinks and kept going.  The total drive was 4.5 hours.  We stopped south of Virginia, MN in Eveleth MN and ate dinner at Boomtown Brewery & Woodfire Grill.  

Dinner stop

We asked to sit on the patio (the only ones) and were commenting on how nice it felt outside when a family was leaving the restaurant and we overheard the little girl say, “It’s SO hot!”  It was 83 degrees.  The food was good but the service was slow (by Dallas standards) so we stayed longer than planned.  Next stop was at the Super One grocery store in Virginia, MN, just a few miles up the road.  I’d made the grocery list because when we did this in Hawaii, just a few weeks ago, it was a shit show.  So we were in and out pretty quickly but Ryan was stressed and overwhelmed at the pace of the shop and may have PTSD today.

Another 1.3 hours to go and we got to our cabin at 10:10 and there was still a hint of sunlight.  The sun set around 9:50pm – crazy!

The cabin’s adorable and we’re right on Lake Kabatogama.  There’s no AC, which I hadn’t thought about and the bed Nick and I shared was tiny and the pillow was awful so I think I finally fell asleep around 3am, only to wake up to a full-on sunrise at 4:15am!!!  But I’ll save all of this for my “Day 2” entry 😊