Longest 200 milesJul 12, 2009
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I spent the day on I-94 unexpectedly. I traveled for an hour or so and stopped to eat breakfast, then I stopped at Sauk Centre to visit the Sinclair Lewis Interpretive Center. This rest stop off the highway had a museum telling the story of how Sauk Centre was built, Lewis' childhood there, and then how he wrote his books and became the first American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature.
On I went to a rest area northwest of Monticello to have lunch. After eating, I made a phone call and looked at the slowed traffic heading southeast. A helicopter flew overhead and a siren from a police or ambulance sounded, so I decided to wait it out. My destination was about an hour and a half away and there was plenty of time to get to a parking lot at an RV sales and repair shop. I was on the phone for hours but the traffic was still crawling along. I asked a guy who lived in the Twin Cities if this was typical and he said it's a little slower than usual, but everybody is coming back after a weekend up north. So it's like the Thruway in NY going into NYC on a Sunday afternoon.
I decided to get into that traffic, since it was now near suppertime and I could see it would take over two hours to get there. It took over an hour to go 6 miles where everyone had to get off the freeway. There was an accident where a guy in a station wagon missed his exit, so crossed both lanes to try to get to the center to make a u-turn. He clipped a big truck carrying diesel fuel and it tipped over. The freeway was closed for 9 hours!
Once I got off, I went south while most people went north to route 10. A lot of cars went east on 55, but I had checked that the next road going east would get me closer to Shakopee so I went there. Route 12 east had a detour where I had to go west, then south, then east to bypass road construction. Phew - I got to the parking lot at 8:30 PM - 12 hours to go 197 miles!
