Faribault, Minnesota: Headed Back To Maryland (Soon)

We left Missoula, Montana on Saturday. We were originally leaving on Friday however our 'overnight' mail from the post office turned into 'over two nights mail". For some reason the post office couldn't get our package there in the allotted time.

It finally arrived Saturday at noon and we hit the road. We drove until dark and spent the night in a Walmart. In the year and half we have been on the road in an RV we

have stayed in a Walmart parking lot four times. Some people do it more frequently however we only use it when we need a couple of hours of sleep before taking off early the next day.

And that's exactly what we did; we were on the road by 8 am the next morning. We drove across the rest of Montana, all of North Dakota and into

Minnesota. All of it beautiful country. And the amount of open space in Montana and North Dakota is incredible.

Minnesota is called the land of 10,000 lakes and sure seems to be true -- lakes everywhere. Some big, some small, but lots of beautiful, fish filled lakes.

We were making pretty good time

until Mary Lynn saw a sign advertising "The Mall of America", the largest mall in the US. Of course we had to stop, if only for a few hours.

So we stayed in St Cloud on Sunday night and drove to the Mall of America Monday morning. The mall is really something, complete with an amusement park, underwater aquarium, and of course tons of stores. It's said that if you spent only 10 minutes in each store it would take you 86 hours to visit all of them. Over 4.5 miles of storefronts. Wow.

We left the mall, headed south, intending to drive until dark. And then it happened.

Just as we were going through a highway construction zone, I heard a loud bang, looked in the rear view camera and saw our tow car swinging wildly from side to side. Obviously not good.

Turns out our tow bar broke. And at the worst possible time although to be accurate, there is no 'good time' for your tow bar to break. And thank goodness for safety cables. That was all that kept the tow vehicle from taking off on its own. All in all, a real mess.

That said, nobody was hurt or hit by our toad. We finally got stopped and surveyed the damage. The car hit the motorcycle carrier several times and has a lot of damage on the hood and both sides of the hood.

The tow bar company is sending a replacement unit so we are camped beside a small lake is a peaceful little campground waiting for it to arrive.

It shook both of us up however we quickly realized just how fortunate we were in that no one else was involved and no one was hurt. All the other 'things' can be repaired.

It's Mary Lynn's birthday on Friday and I had hoped to get her back to Maryland in time to celebrate with the kids. That probably won't happen however we should be back in Maryland in the next week or so.

Can't wait to get back to Maryland and enjoy some steamed crabs!

See Ya!