4th Street Diaries, Day n+1
Yes, there is more write-up. Yes, it's weeks after the con. I was tired (still am); deal with it.
I'd meant to sleep in Monday morning, but my back-brain knew it had a move-out and trip coming up, so it got me up early even though I'd done most of the prep the night before. That's okay; it let me do a very leisurely move-out, and left plenty of time to correct the bill. As I rather expected, the bill was for the larger room they'd moved me to rather than the slightly cheaper room I'd reserved; however, the instant I pointed this out to the desk clerk, there was no question that it would be corrected. (IME, the hotel staff were like this about everything; as soon as they were told about a problem, they were all about making it go away, and at no point was "the problem" treated as a synonym for "the customer".)
There was a bit of passenger-shuffling in the lobby as about a third of the con prepared to go to Fish, which is 4th Street lingo for the traditional trip to a very good sushi restaurant. I was able to tetris in three riders and two sets of luggage along with my own not-inconsiderable stuff (knew there was a reason I bought a car with cargo capacity), and we jaunted off. (I really didn't mind driving; my lack of enthusiasm was only because I'd coped with the St. Paul expressway interchanges on the way in by promising myself I didn't have to do it again. But the traffic, shockingly, wasn't too bad this time.)
Experimental evidence supported the assertion that sushi counteracts post-con brain-drain very effectively; you could see people becoming perkier and practically hear the increase in synapse firing. Not that one needs an excuse for this excursion; the food was as good as the company, which is saying a lot.
After fish, T & K and I had a nice, if brief, wander around downtown St. Paul, which looks to be almost as interesting as downtown Chicago -- sort of a Chicago Lite. The view of the river is quite fine, way down in its gorge below the city. Then I dropped them at another hotel where they could catch a ride to the airport, and hit the road for home.
My plan was to drive south along the Mississippi for as long as I could. At first the route was disappointingly short of river view, although it was a pleasant enough drive. But soon I found myself running right alongside the river, and pretty much stayed there until it was too dark to see. I stopped in Red Wing to pick up a compass, as I'd forgotten to bring mine; I felt rather dirty going into a mall on my nature-oriented drive, but I knew Dunham's would have what I wanted. Next stop was in Lake City, to briefly dip my toes in Lake Pepin. I also pulled off briefly at Wabasha; sadly, the National Eagle Center was already closed for the day (I hadn't realized how late it was!), but I did buy myself a cone of truly excellent chocolate ice cream, which I ate while walking along the river. I can only assume that Minnesota's economy is doing better than Michigan's (whose isn't?), because every town I saw had little parks and public-access areas, and they were all neat and tidy and well-maintained.
The riverside route was all I could have asked for, with the road bracketed by the Mississippi on one side and great wooded bluffs springing up out of the ground on the other. I did risk one picture through the windshield, but mostly kept my attention split between "ooohing" at the landscape and not driving off the road into it. ;-)
I'm glad I chose to do the scenic route on the way home; the divided highway was frequently terraced, and the north-bound side, being lower down, wouldn't have had nearly as good views in places as the south-bound side.
Winona has both a Ground Round and a Sinclair station. My god, I thought, I've driven through a time warp. (It also has a Vila Street.)
The Wisconsin side of the river was just as scenic, but the road was noticeably rougher. As evening approached, I stopped at a scenic-ish overlook and dined on cold Imperial beef and the world's saltiest string cheese from the cooler, looking out over a patch of swamp at another great bluff, and watching the bunnies come out to forage.
Eventually it got too dark to appreciate the river route, and I recalculated (with maps, people, real paper maps!) my route to veer more efficiently toward the expressway instead of continuing south. Though happily, the Savana marina politely had its gate still open, even though it was nearing midnight, so I was able to go down and say one last goodbye to the water before turning for home.
I suspect the route through northwestern Illinois would be quite pretty, and fun to drive, in the daytime. Unfortunately, all I can testify to is that it was dark. Very dark. The road was very twisty and hilly -- did I mention dark? Not a fast leg of the trip, to the annoyance of the occasional local who came up behind me.
My initial squint at the map had missed that my little local highway didn't actually connect to the expressway, so I ended up having to backtrack about six miles. Then I was finally on a proper multi-lane mile-eater, which by that time I was more than ready for.
(Note to self: The route back was: up to 7th Street east, which more or less turns into the on-ramp for 52 south out of town. 52 -> I-494 -> 10/61 -> 61 -> 35 --> 81 -> Platteville -> 81/80 -> 80 becomes 84 at border -> Savanah -> 52 -> 26 South (very briefly) -> I-88 -> I-355. And then the usual route to home.)
In the end, the scenic route only added about 50 miles to the trip, though between the stops and slower speeds it also added about 8 hours. Worth it, totally worth it.
Along the way, it finally hit me what the real answers were to the questions Pat had asked about my query. I ended up rewriting 3/4 of the thing on the road (yay for portable recording devices!).
I'd meant to find a rest area or scenic overlook and sleep in the car, but by the time I was really tired enough I was in that stretch of Indiana where there's no good quiet place to stop that doesn't have a trucks-only truck stop in it. I did stop long enough to check that the MP3 recorder had actually recorded (tiiiiiiny little display numbers =/= useful while driving) when I stopped for gas. Then I figured at that point, it made sense to push on.
An hour later, I was getting the dangerous sort of dozey, so I did pull over and catch an hour's sleep in the back seat. Some guy helpfully stopped to check that I wasn't trying to unpack a spare tire while I was futzing about with the sleeping bag, for which he gets points even if he did then hand me a flyer for his church before moving along. An hour's nap was surprisingly refreshing, and then it was back on the road and, finally, home.
Door to door, counting the nap, was about 17 hours.
The kitten has grown up enough to give me a brief cold shoulder for abandoning him when I arrived home, but the older cats were happy to see me.
The drive was an interesting experiment, and I'll probably do something similar next year. Which I will totally have the opportunity for; I can't wait for next year's 4th Street.
I'd meant to sleep in Monday morning, but my back-brain knew it had a move-out and trip coming up, so it got me up early even though I'd done most of the prep the night before. That's okay; it let me do a very leisurely move-out, and left plenty of time to correct the bill. As I rather expected, the bill was for the larger room they'd moved me to rather than the slightly cheaper room I'd reserved; however, the instant I pointed this out to the desk clerk, there was no question that it would be corrected. (IME, the hotel staff were like this about everything; as soon as they were told about a problem, they were all about making it go away, and at no point was "the problem" treated as a synonym for "the customer".)
There was a bit of passenger-shuffling in the lobby as about a third of the con prepared to go to Fish, which is 4th Street lingo for the traditional trip to a very good sushi restaurant. I was able to tetris in three riders and two sets of luggage along with my own not-inconsiderable stuff (knew there was a reason I bought a car with cargo capacity), and we jaunted off. (I really didn't mind driving; my lack of enthusiasm was only because I'd coped with the St. Paul expressway interchanges on the way in by promising myself I didn't have to do it again. But the traffic, shockingly, wasn't too bad this time.)
Experimental evidence supported the assertion that sushi counteracts post-con brain-drain very effectively; you could see people becoming perkier and practically hear the increase in synapse firing. Not that one needs an excuse for this excursion; the food was as good as the company, which is saying a lot.
After fish, T & K and I had a nice, if brief, wander around downtown St. Paul, which looks to be almost as interesting as downtown Chicago -- sort of a Chicago Lite. The view of the river is quite fine, way down in its gorge below the city. Then I dropped them at another hotel where they could catch a ride to the airport, and hit the road for home.
My plan was to drive south along the Mississippi for as long as I could. At first the route was disappointingly short of river view, although it was a pleasant enough drive. But soon I found myself running right alongside the river, and pretty much stayed there until it was too dark to see. I stopped in Red Wing to pick up a compass, as I'd forgotten to bring mine; I felt rather dirty going into a mall on my nature-oriented drive, but I knew Dunham's would have what I wanted. Next stop was in Lake City, to briefly dip my toes in Lake Pepin. I also pulled off briefly at Wabasha; sadly, the National Eagle Center was already closed for the day (I hadn't realized how late it was!), but I did buy myself a cone of truly excellent chocolate ice cream, which I ate while walking along the river. I can only assume that Minnesota's economy is doing better than Michigan's (whose isn't?), because every town I saw had little parks and public-access areas, and they were all neat and tidy and well-maintained.
The riverside route was all I could have asked for, with the road bracketed by the Mississippi on one side and great wooded bluffs springing up out of the ground on the other. I did risk one picture through the windshield, but mostly kept my attention split between "ooohing" at the landscape and not driving off the road into it. ;-)
I'm glad I chose to do the scenic route on the way home; the divided highway was frequently terraced, and the north-bound side, being lower down, wouldn't have had nearly as good views in places as the south-bound side.
Winona has both a Ground Round and a Sinclair station. My god, I thought, I've driven through a time warp. (It also has a Vila Street.)
The Wisconsin side of the river was just as scenic, but the road was noticeably rougher. As evening approached, I stopped at a scenic-ish overlook and dined on cold Imperial beef and the world's saltiest string cheese from the cooler, looking out over a patch of swamp at another great bluff, and watching the bunnies come out to forage.
Eventually it got too dark to appreciate the river route, and I recalculated (with maps, people, real paper maps!) my route to veer more efficiently toward the expressway instead of continuing south. Though happily, the Savana marina politely had its gate still open, even though it was nearing midnight, so I was able to go down and say one last goodbye to the water before turning for home.
I suspect the route through northwestern Illinois would be quite pretty, and fun to drive, in the daytime. Unfortunately, all I can testify to is that it was dark. Very dark. The road was very twisty and hilly -- did I mention dark? Not a fast leg of the trip, to the annoyance of the occasional local who came up behind me.
My initial squint at the map had missed that my little local highway didn't actually connect to the expressway, so I ended up having to backtrack about six miles. Then I was finally on a proper multi-lane mile-eater, which by that time I was more than ready for.
(Note to self: The route back was: up to 7th Street east, which more or less turns into the on-ramp for 52 south out of town. 52 -> I-494 -> 10/61 -> 61 -> 35 --> 81 -> Platteville -> 81/80 -> 80 becomes 84 at border -> Savanah -> 52 -> 26 South (very briefly) -> I-88 -> I-355. And then the usual route to home.)
In the end, the scenic route only added about 50 miles to the trip, though between the stops and slower speeds it also added about 8 hours. Worth it, totally worth it.
Along the way, it finally hit me what the real answers were to the questions Pat had asked about my query. I ended up rewriting 3/4 of the thing on the road (yay for portable recording devices!).
I'd meant to find a rest area or scenic overlook and sleep in the car, but by the time I was really tired enough I was in that stretch of Indiana where there's no good quiet place to stop that doesn't have a trucks-only truck stop in it. I did stop long enough to check that the MP3 recorder had actually recorded (tiiiiiiny little display numbers =/= useful while driving) when I stopped for gas. Then I figured at that point, it made sense to push on.
An hour later, I was getting the dangerous sort of dozey, so I did pull over and catch an hour's sleep in the back seat. Some guy helpfully stopped to check that I wasn't trying to unpack a spare tire while I was futzing about with the sleeping bag, for which he gets points even if he did then hand me a flyer for his church before moving along. An hour's nap was surprisingly refreshing, and then it was back on the road and, finally, home.
Door to door, counting the nap, was about 17 hours.
The kitten has grown up enough to give me a brief cold shoulder for abandoning him when I arrived home, but the older cats were happy to see me.
The drive was an interesting experiment, and I'll probably do something similar next year. Which I will totally have the opportunity for; I can't wait for next year's 4th Street.