Hearts in Hawai'i
Our 2024 Minnesota State Parks Trip--Day 9
6/17/2024
Returning Home and Final Thoughts
Mornings like this remind me why summer is by far my favorite season--it was 70 degrees, breezy and muggy. Perfect! I enjoyed this while hauling out our bags and loading up the car in preparation of the drive back to Proctor. We actually checked out an hour earlier than planned, at 6:00. Patty liked this earlier check-out but I also realized it would bring us into Twin Cities rush hour traffic at about 7 a.m. With the gas tank refilled at Kwik Trip, we were on our way.
One of these days I'll finally dispell the notion that I know highway and street directions in an unfamiliar place better than Siri. Once again, I didn't. She was telling me to stay in the right lane as we approached the US 52/I-35 E merge but as soon as I saw the sign marked "Exit" I assumed Siri had blown a circuit and jumped into the middle lane, which then dumped us off onto I-94 headed west toward Minneapolis. Not at all what I wanted! But I knew just enough about Twin Cities freeways to know that exiting north on MN 280 would take us directly to 35W and a quick exit from the Twin Cities area. Of course, we could have kept going for another mile and a half or so and hit 35W anyway. 
Once we were on I-35W, I cranked up the cruise control to 75 mph and it was smooth sailing the rest of the way home. And of course, we got our first look at Proctor's fog bank and what Lake Superior can do to the temperature, watching them drop from 78 to 58 degrees in about a 20 mile stretch after we got to the Mahtowa exit. 
We arrived back home in plenty of time to unpack, take a shower and head downtown for the retirement party for the lady who had been the Senior Manager of Business Services for close to fifteen years in the organization I had worked at for 39 years.
Was this trip worth it? Oh, hell yeah! It was a much cheaper trip than we had anticipated, nearly $1,000 cheaper than budgeted. We visited nine great state parks; granted, we missed three others but we can catch up on those in a future trip. Getting back to the cost, our daily cost was about 1/3 of what a Maui trip would currently cost, maybe less. Maui has, for folks like us, priced themselves out of consideration and it's sad to see this. Greed is always sad to see.
Our hotel was good enough that we would stay there again in a heartbeat, although I'm more sold on that idea than Patty. She had a few quibbles not connected to me which detracted slightly from her enjoyment of the hotel.
What's next? We always have a list of places in mind for future trips. As of now, these include (those which would included taking to the air):
--Chicago
--Florida
--Oahu
--Las Vegas
--Pacific Coast Highway (could be a drive from here but probably flying, especially if driving south from Seattle)
Road trips include:
--two more trips visiting Minnesota State Parks we haven't seen yet
--Branson, MO
--Glacier Nat'l Park and Yellowstone Nat'l Park
--Niagara Falls and New England (probably an October trip to enjoy the fall colors)
--A trip to some place we would use as a jumping off place to visit some National Parks in Utah
More ideas will come, I'm sure. Once Patty retires, we'll have the ability to do more traveling. Subject to health care issues and other unforseen events, of course!
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