Before I left for Minneapolis, I searched online for information on places to visit. One place I received a brochure from was the "Iron Trail" in northern Minnesota. This was an area in which mining of iron ore was a big part of the local economy or history. It sounded pretty interesting, plus there were a couple of state parks at which I could stop. So one weekend, I loaded up my car and took a trip.
Right after I arrived home from work I loaded my car and headed out as quickly as possible, since my destination—Hibbing, MN—was a three or four hour drive north. My attempted quick get away was soon foiled however, as the realities of traffic caught up with me. I encountered about a ten mile backup on the interstate, during which traffic just crawled the entire time. In fact, by the time I made it through the traffic jam, the accident which caused the slowdown was already cleared from the road and all of the emergency vehicles had left. Even after I got through this though, traffic was still pretty heavy. I guess it was all the city-slickers (like me) fleeing from the city to head to their cabins or lakes for the weekend.
The driving went fairly well. My directions were actually accurate so I did not even get lost. The only thing that really annoyed my was an evil unattended gas station I encountered. I stretched my gas tank a little further than I probably should have, plus there were not many gas stations in there area, so when I was in need of more gas I did not have a whole lot of choices on where I could stop. The gas station I did stumble upon though was one with no attendant. There was a machine to either feed money or a credit card into, and then you could pump your gas. It took me a couple of minutes to figure out that I needed to give it money before I could pump my gas. After I finished though, I learned that these machines did not give change. Instead, it issued a code which could be entered the next time you filled up at one of these gas stations. This would give a credit for the amount of change you were supposed to receive. This system, however, was a little annoying since I had never seen one of these gas stations before, and did not know if I would actually be able to use my "change". It was only like two or three dollars though, so it was more a matter of principle than anything. As I would learn in a couple of days though, the really shady part about this chain of gas stations was that these receipts could only be used at the gas station where they were obtained. They were not valid at other gas stations in the same chain, which I did not figure out till I actually tried using it at another one. At least there are none of these around where I live.
My tent in my totally awesome campsite
I arrived in Hibbing just before 10 p.m., having killed about 10,000 mosquitoes, all of which were now strewn across the front of my car. I headed to my campground, only having to stop in one bar to ask for directions. Now I must say that I was actually semi-responsible in regards to my campground and had actually called ahead to make sure that there would be spots available. The lady with which I spoke said there would be ample spots open that weekend. When I arrived there though, I discovered that the entire campground had been rented for a wedding celebration, and there was no place for me to stay. The one time I actually planned ahead, I was foiled by misinformation. I suppose I could have been "3rd Cousin Darryl" and tried to convince people I was a relative that belonged there, but I was not a very good actor so I did not bother attempting that charade.
Luckily, I had another campground marked on my map and drove there. The campground actually turned out to be more of a trailer park that happened to have some extra space that they rented to campers. At this point I really did not care and just settled there. It cost $12 a night, which seemed high for just putting my tent up in a field, but I did not have much of a choice and paid for two nights.
