Day 12 - Chamberlain to St. Paul

Tuesday, July 13, 1994

From Best Western Lee’s Motor Inn, Chamberlain, SD
To A VW Bus behind Jean’s house, St. Paul, MN
423.6 miles
0 brew pubs visited

Yesterday: Day 11 – Billings to Chamberlain (To start at the beginning of this series, go to Day 1 here.)

The storm has moved on by morning, so we depart in sunshine. We cross the Missouri River at Chamberlain, and the terrain is much different than before. Flat is the word. The geology is different than we have been seeing for almost two weeks. The flora and fauna, too.

We catch up to the clouds at the Minnesota border and drive in rain the rest of the way to St. Paul. The rain doesn’t help with the lack of landscape features. Pete and Tom’s minds are wandering forward to the return to work and their real lives. It’s a quiet day; not much chatter on the CB radios; not much to talk about.

Off and on while we’ve been traveling, Tom has been making phone calls back to Minnesota, closing a deal on a new house. But he has not yet take possession of his house in St. Paul, so Laura and I spend the night in a VW Bus parked in back of his neighbor Jean’s house. Tom is home now. Pete’s heading back to Madison early tomorrow morning. Our adventure is almost over. Deadlines and commitments are forcing us back to the real world.

So the adventure ends with a quiet slide back into the real world. Tomorrow Laura and I travel the last leg of our journey without our co-pilots. We are grateful to our two friends for volunteering to come with us on this trip. We have all spent many days together camping and taking road trips over the years, and this is the biggest one so far.