Winding down in the windy snow

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Ok, yes yes yes. I havent done a blog entry for ages. After all the excitement of the blogs in California i'm sure you were all expectring the fireworks and the such to continue right back till blighty. Well, as it worked out on 24th November i flew 2 Frontier airlines flights from San Fransisco - Denver - Minneapolis. Respectively these were with Larry the Leopard and Foxy the Fox (all the Frontier airline planes are mascoted by animals. As you can see the brainstormers ran out of ideas when naming the fox plane - just a bit).

So what have i been up to since arrival in this part of the worls and why on earth did i go there. Well, those with good memories will remember Laurel from earlier blogs from our heady days in Queenstown. Whatever spark was sown back in the day seems to have continued via the wonders of email and so i decided to go and visit her part of the world as my last stop before getting home.

In terms of photogenic activity this part of the trip was sparse and mainly involved spending time with her wonderful family and thier warm warm hospitality; trying my hand at driving on the 'wrong' side of the road (reasonably successful one might say as well. The record is no crashes, no near misses, no cries of fear from the passenger seat and only minor issues with directions - although yes i did get a bit lost - just a bit); visiting the Mall Of America which i'd visited before years ago but was still absolutely in awe of; seeing the worlds largest gingerbread house in said mall; visiting a stunning exhibition at the local science museum called BodyParts which has on display all manner of bits of the human body. The curator's pioneering speciality is to inject corpses blood systems with a protien which hardens. After which getting some jolly cleaver enzymes to eat away the rest of the flesh leaving a perfect representation of a humans circulatory system - wizzy indeed; walking around the many lakes which characterises the area of Minnesota where i was living; road tripping across the mighty state if Wisconsin and stopping off for such delights as a bar called 'the showboat' showing off one off the all time worst House Bands i've seen..then eating a breakfast so large i may have exploded a bit; arriving in Chicago and settling down to bed one evening aware of some mild chill in the air; awaking the next morning in Chicago to uber huge snow drifts causing all flights to be cancelled; feeling lucky i had 2 days in Chicago anyway before my flight.

All in all it was a strange old bit of the trip. On the one hand i was remaining in civilisation and was very well looked after. Also all the things i did were very 'day to day' and so i really got a feel for what it was like to live in this corner of the world rather than just bustle through as normally happens. On the other hand there was always the realisation that pretty soon a crazy 13 months of travelling would be over. It was tranquil, lovely and at odds to the manic speed most of the trip has been lived at.

Thumbs up to the place and the people who made it excellent.

marc

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Photos

View from Foxy
Over Colarado

Plane sailing
With the imaginatively named Foxy the Fox as wingman

Laurel and Marc
...and a fried breakfast one morning which included squash caserole..fried...in bacon juice. yes it is as good as it sounds. and yes it is probably not that healthy all in all.

The Worlds Largest Ginger Bread House
smells of ginger, took a month to build, is massive, will soon have a picture in the Guiness Book of Records. Winner basically. Sadly unedible due to chemical spraying practices at the mall. boo

Mall Of America
Complete with a scary amount of shops, eateries, attractions, and even a rollercoaster..obviously

Welcome to Chicago
Luckily not our mode of transport

Marc being guitarist
Laurel took this astoundingly good picture of me looking torchured and all that rock and roll stuff.

Road tripping
with cake..surely the best way to do it