Stillwater, Minnesota

My first encounter with a police officer came as I was investigating an abandoned farmstead as a place to camp. I noticed him stopped at a nearby intersection after I turned away from the dilapidated house unable to penetrate the thick overgrown weeds surrounding its backside.  I thought I’d give the barn a try but the presence of the officer gave me pause.  


I was hoping it was just a coincidence that he was stopped at the intersection but when he didn’t move I had to concede he had spotted me and I needed to clear out.  The only way was to go past him.  He called out through his rolled down passenger window asking if I was returning to the highway I had just exited.  He said he was responding to two calls from motorists who thought it was dangerous for a cyclist to be riding on the shoulder of the road.  

I confessed I was looking for a place to pitch my tent for the night.  He suggested I go back down the side road behind us that had a dead end sign and slip into the forest.  He told me I better hurry as rain was imminent.  He was surprisingly cordial, not asking for ID, or running me off.  And thus I enjoyed my first forest camping and softest ground of the trip, as well as the most secluded.

The previous night I camped along the Mississippi besides a beach and a boat launch.  I had followed a sign to the “recreational area” thinking there might be camping.  There was, but not sanctioned.  I was somewhat hidden by two large fir trees besides a basketball court and a soccer field.  As the light was fading a car pulled into the parking lot and I heard the chatter of young voices and the bounce of a ball.  I feared a group had come to shoot some hoops in the cool of the evening.  Fortunately they went over to the soccer field and only kicked the ball around for a few minutes in the waning light.

My sleep was interrupted by an occasional freight train, indicating the union that had been threatening a strike had ratified the settlement of a few days ago. I was closer to the river than the train tracks, but I didn’t hear any vessels breaking the water.  I could see an occasional barge, but no young boys on rafts.

The road along the river offered occasional overlooks which were generally accompanied by a historical marker relating to logging or the construction of a fort and other incidents in the early history of the region. One was at the site of Maiden Rock where a young Indian woman was said to have lept to her death rather than being forced into marriage with someone she “dispised.”  A famous climb in the Tour de France in the Vosges, La Planche des Belles Filles, also takes its name from a legend of women leaping to their deaths rather than being forced into sexual relations with their conquerors.

Not far south of Maiden Rock along the river i passed thoughnthe small town of Pepin where Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the “Little House on the Prairie” series of books, was born in 1867.  It hosts a museum devoted to her as well as her childhood home.  A gift shop was packed with trinkets and her many books.  It was reminiscent of a museum in Red Cloud, Nebraska devoted to Willa Cather that Janina and I passed on our drive home from Telluride last month.

My long prologue, over 450 miles, to the first Carnegie that was new to me came to an end in Stillwater, just over the border from Wisconsin. But first I renewed acquaintances with a Carnegie in Hudson, just across Lake Saint Croix that separates the states north of the Mississippi.  It was still home to a law firm, which had let  the ivy adorning its exterior cover its designation as a library over its entrance. 

And to welcome me to Minnesota the wind switched the day before from the south to a northerly, dropping the temperature twenty degrees from the 80s to the 60s, and then another twenty degrees during the night. I needed my sweater, a recent addition to my wardrobe thanks to Telluride’s Free Box, for the first time.   I welcomed the cool, but not the head wind, though it wasn’t too severe blunted by the forested terrain.  The further north I venture, the more azure the sky and the fluffier the clouds.  The sky is almost as pleasurable to gaze upon as the countryside.

I crossed into Minnesota on a new pedestrian/bicycle bridge and headed straight to the Carnegie just a few blocks away.  At first I feared it had been razed, but it was only blocked by a huge three-story addition.  It’s frontside retained all its majesty and was unmarred by the addition.  It was an early Carnegie dating to 1902 and had been expanded previously by a pair of matching additions to its sides.  It’s rotunda was surrounded by columns and was under a mini-dome.  It was a good start to my set of new Carnegies on this trip.  Now it’s on to the Twin Cities, twenty five miles away for a quick six more.