Minnesota Nice!

Well I'm sat in a condo on the shore of Lake Superior, sunlight creeping through the shutters along with a cool breeze. I've spent four or five days in this state so far and I'm really impressed; the people here are generally known as "Minnesota nice" and I've seen plenty of examples of that. Ash's dad has kindly brought us up to this place by the water, and we may or may not stay another night before we head back to Minneapolis.

After getting off of that pretty horrendous train ride, we sorted ourselves out and headed out of the city to Waconia. Armed with a sandwich and a mighty fine mango smoothie, I got my first experience of a lakeside, one of around 14,000 spots of open water in this state. We then headed back to Ash's mum's place, and it really is a great spot: there's woods, lawns, old farm fields and total solitude (minus Indie, her dog, barking at me to throw her sticks). It's a totally new experience to me, and the sheer space and size dwarfs our own lovely rural areas in Derbyshire for example. See I can use positive words for home!

We spent the day exploring the local area, including a haunted cemetery and spying some huge lakeside properties. In that area we went for a great meal at 'Maynards' on Lake Minnetonka, having fun surprising people with my accent (how posh and cultured I sound over here). In fact posh reminds me of this English guy I met in Seattle, called Avery. He was from London, studied at Cambridge, wore about six sweaters and ushered those famous words - What happens in San Francisco, stays in San Francisco." Needless to say I'm now starting a petition to get him extradited back to England, and possibly somewhere else where I won't come into contact with him. Like France.

The next day was spent mainly on the property, exploring the outside, playing with Indie and playing some music. I've got a piano out here so I've been doing some writing, so hopefully once I'm a huge success I can travel the world forever and this blog will become a timeless classic. We'll see. On Thursday we headed out to some of the nearby towns, and by towns I really mean villages. Very strange, very interesting, very American (pronounced "a-mur-i-cun"). It was nice to have two pretty chilled out days after all of the travelling and plan changing!

Then we planned for this trip up north to Tofte on Lake Superior. On the Friday morning we met John, Ash's dad, in Minneapolis and hit the road. We stopped off in Duluth, which is about the same size as good old Chez (but happens to be on a picturesque spot overlooking the lake), and we grabbed great burgers, chicken wild rice soup and local beer at a place called 'Grandma's.' After a few pitstops we made it up here, drove around the area with its endless rows of trees and wonderful expanses of water. We had a meal in the evening before watching a cosy film and listening to the water beat a few yards away from us against the rocks. Keep reading!