I have had adventures in 49 of the 50 states and I have written about them. It is the Spring of 2024 and I have not been to Minnesota. When will I get there? Will I ever get there? I have been to the Minneapolis airport a couple of times on my way to San Antonio. I have overnighted on the Empire Builder and apparently stopped at train stations in Minnesota, but I must have been asleep. I have no true adventure in Minnesota to report for now. They tell me Minneapolis is a lovely city with many bike paths. I personally would like to visit Grand Marais on Lake Superior in Minnesota and perhaps Lake of the Woods and the Northwest Angle. That trip would be quite an ambitious one for an old lady. I hope one day I can complete this journal and write about my adventure in Minnesota. Time will tell. I can report that I have mastered the art of updating prior posts so I will be able to go back and change this post when the time arrives.
I have almost decided that the final destination will be Northwest Angle, Minnesota on Lake of the Woods. There are many reasons for that choice, the most prominent being Sunsweep Sculpture, a granite sculpture that symbolically, if not literally, stretches from Campobello to Point Roberts, Washington. On a small island off The Angle the center of the sculpture stands and it is known as the Keystone piece between the two arching granite slabs. You can google it for itself or wait for me to write more about the sculpture someday. In any event I think that it is fitting that this particular journal begins and ends with a “keystone” which Mr. Webster would tell you is a central stone at the summit of an arch, locking the whole together. My journal begins and ends with a “keystone”, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and a piece of rock in the wilds of Minnesota. A bit unorthodox, as has been my entire journal of the travels to the 50 states.
If you have been following this journal at all you probably came to the realization that despite the haphazard attempt at chronology, I became serious about visiting all 50 states in a meaningful way when I retired in 2014 and Harold and I took our trip to Nebraska to see the sandhill cranes. We managed to add quite a few states to my list on that journey and revisited some I had visited before. We passed through everything between South Carolina and Kearney, Nebraska, including Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, a tip of Louisiana, Arkansas, Kansas, Iowa, and more on our way back to Maine. My second big trip was in 2019 when Megan and I boarded and then reboarded the Empire Builder and I managed to add Idaho, Montana, and both Dakotas to my list. My final push was the road trip of 2021 from South Carolina to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, adding Indiana and Michigan and revisiting North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York before heading to Maine. My trips to other states have often involved deliberate vacations or a return to places I have visited before. When I look back on a lifetime of travel in the United States I know I have seen much of this country’s beauty and many of its remarkable places. I also believe that there remains much more to see. If you happen upon this blog and read about my adventures, I do hope they inspire you in a small way to go out and make your own adventures by visiting our remarkable land. And don’t forget the rest of North America, South America, Asia, Europe, and Africa and of course, Australia, and other Pacific islands. There is much to see and so little time to do it and for now at least I am done writing about it.
Memories - A Second Chance at Happiness 