Saturday, June 26

Had an uneventful trip through the corn and soybean fields of southern Minnesota, from my oldest brothers home, to Minneapolis. There I set up the rig, went to the airport to pick up John Winter who will travel with me the rest of the trip, and then we went to meet my friend Pam Holt who lives in St. Paul. She drove us around, showing us some fabulous areas of old homes, large and small, but all wonderful. It is so green and lush. Most of the streets are heavily tree lined. We also drove around the U. of Minnesota campus which is also pretty spectacular.

The deux pieces d'resistance were:

1) the new Tyron Guthrie Theater complex. What a fabulous architectural masterpiece. All wrapped in a sky blue wrap, looks like cellophane. Very interesting. And there are huge sections which are cantilevered way out of the main building. Doesn't look scary when you are in it or out on the balconies, but from afar, you think, "I walked on that"???? Totally interesting.

2) a wild Weissman Art Museum designed by Frank Gehry.....same guy as the LA Disney Concert Hall. This one looks like, and is lovingly called, "the tin can". It does look like all sorts of weird shapes of tin cans all piled on top of one another.

Those are impressively avant garde cities, those twin cities. So many colleges and universities are located there, the people are very philanthropic.......but they live in snow. Go figure!

Today we drove up to and just entered North Dakota. Northern Minnesota is so beautiful and lush with all their lakes and rolling hills and trees and..... Meanwhile, N.D. looks like it is going to be very flat and very plain......It is in the Great Plains after all.

Have had some tremendous thunderstorms, lots of lightening, and beaucoups rain. Yesterday could hardly see ahead of yourself on the street. Thankfully, we were sitting in a Starbucks and enjoying looking out at it from within.

I'll let you know how N.D. really is after we see the rest of it.