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We've Got Our Scamp!

I’m jumping ahead a little on this entry, because I don’t want to bury the lede: We picked up our custom built Scamp trailer this afternoon in Backus, Minnesota. We are definitely up in the North Woods! It’s just great, our tiny home for the next year or so. And the people at the Scamp factory (Evelands, Inc. is their formal name) were great, too. Matt, Steve, and Lyle showed us how everything worked (it’s complicated, but not quite as complicated as I expected), and then at the last minute we turned around to go back to get it de-winterized, since we plan on using it now. So, here we are with our Scamp. It needs a name. We’re working on that.

A Haunted Holidome and a Confusing Coffin
Now, how did we get to northern Minnesota from Massachusetts? I mentioned the abandoned Holidome hotel where we stayed on Monday. It was nice, but the Holidome was sad. I worked for the Holiday Inns in the heydays of the Holidome, when the Cincinnati area had three: one in Sharonville, one in Ft. Mitchell, and one in Florence. I painted a tropical mural at the one in Sharonville during a blizzard. Holidomes were over-the-top warm places, often in cold climates, but they are mostly gone now. I read that the last operating Holidome was in Perrysburg, Ohio, but it closed in 2019. Oddly, the place we stayed was in Holiday City, Ohio, about 50 miles west of Perrysburg. Holiday City was founded in 1997. I had no idea people were still starting new cities, but this one was not a huge success. The population is 48, although there are 6 hotels/motels in town. And a brass foundry, the largest in the United States, so I guess travelling brass salespeople keep the hotels in business. But I think they should turn the old Holidome into a haunted attraction and make it a destination every Halloween, that would breathe some new life into it. So to speak.

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Holiday City's Haunted Holidome

We have been driving across toll roads from Massachusetts to Illinois. Some are better than others, but the service plazas are very much the same. Fortunately we have peanut butter and bananas with us, because a steady diet of what they offer at service plazas—pizza, doughnuts, ice cream, and coffee—could be hard on anyone’s constitution.

Past Chicago (and it was very difficult to get past Chicago, how does anyone get anywhere around there?) we turned north and went through Rockford, Illinois. If you park in Rockford, Illinois, well—you are guaranteed a Rockford parking space. A joke for old folks. On to Madison, Wisconsin, where we stayed in a nice hotel next to the Ho-Chunk Indian Casino. The Ho-Chunk used to be the Winnebago tribe, but when they adopted a constitution outlining their tribal rights in 1992, they also went back to their traditional name, which means People of the Loud Voices. So I guess they shouted at each other a lot?

On our way into Madison, we passed a pickup truck with Texas plates carrying a coffin in the back. We know this because the coffin was a little too long for the truck so it was sticking out the back. It would be interesting to know the story behind this.

An impromptu hearse?

On through Wisconsin, passing the famous Dells, through Eau Claire, and then off the interstates and along U.S. and state routes. They grow a lot of cranberries in Wisconsin, and we passed a lot of flooded cranberry bogs, because it's harvest time. We also passed cranberry bogs in Massachusetts. Google tells me that Wisconsin and Massachusetts are in fact the top two cranberry-producing states in the United States. Cranberry bogs are pretty cool, and I will remember I saw the little red fruits being gathered for my sauce on Thanksgiving.

Flooded cranberry bogs in Wisconsin

More Than 1,000 Lakes
We crossed the Mississippi to get from Wisconsin to Minnesota—the river’s source is just north of where we are now, near Bemidji, at Lake Cass (we saw it on another trip). There are a LOT of lakes in Minnesota. We stopped in Cambridge, Minnesota, for the night on Wednesday, and early on Thursday we drove around Mille Lacs Lake, which is huge—and its name means "A Thousand Lakes Lake," which is redundant. We also passed Hole in the Day Lake, which is actually named after an Indian chief who was named Hole in the Day. By noon we were in Pequot Lakes, a town surrounded by lakes, just south of Backus. It was a rainy day, one of the few we’ve seen (and the first one in 40 days in the area), but Friday morning dawned frosty but sunny as we got ready to go get the Scamp. Now the adventure really begins, but we have a couple more nights before it gets warm enough to actually camp. There will be an update! And if anyone has a good name for a little white and red Scamp camper, let us know.







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