Minnesota Mysteries

Yesterday and today we rode across central Minnesota, and we saw some very strange things.  The first thing was a floating island just before Vergas.  We'd stopped in at a small park by a lake and I glanced out at a big grass-covered island.  It was kind of windy and the wind was blowing the grass around and I mentioned to Paul C that the grass blowing was making an illusion that the island was moving.  He looked at for a few seconds and said, "It IS moving".  Somehow this giant lump of roots and grass was surviving and floating around the lake in the wind.  Below are two pictures separated by half a minute or so, and further down is a link to the whole movie.

 

Click HERE to see Floating Island Movie 

The next thing that seems really strange is that this is an election year, with a presidential election less than two months away.  In the five states we've cycled through, we have seen less than half a dozen Trump signs and NO Hillary signs.  It's almost as this is an inverted election with people voting AGAINST a candidate instead of for one and everyone seems embarrassed to admit who they're going to vote for.  Here's the republican campaign office in Havre, MT with only one tiny Trump sign (circled in orange) showing.

As we rode the back roads in Minnesota today near Brainerd, there were funny spots in the road - it looked like the road was rusting!  Sure enough, upon closer examination, the asphalt seemed to have chunks of iron in it and they were slowly rusting away.

Next we came across several buildings that looked like township headquarters, but they were out in the middle of nowhere, miles from the closest town.  Why they would put them away from everything else just baffled us.  Maybe the politicians smell?

And lastly, the street signs in this stretch were just baffling.  Many roads had two numbers or a number and a letter.  And neither of the names on the road would match what was on our map.  Here you see the intersection of Cass Line Road and Cass Line Road, with dual names of 10 and 60th St SW and County Highway 7.

You may have to click on the image to see it full size.  Several of the locals said that MN was changing all the street names and now no-one knew what was what or anything.  So go figger...maybe Minnesota is somehow connected to Middle-Earth and we have somehow tunneled into it!