Day Five: West Branch to Minnesota (267 mi)

"Home, sweet home!"  Well, almost.  We are back on familiar turf (I35), though considerably further north from where we traverse this important transportation corridor week in and week out in Waco, TX.  After continuing west from Hoover's West Branch, IO to the capital city, Des Moines, we hooked a right and headed due north on I35.  We should be on this road to its end in Duluth, MN, which we'll reach tomorrow.  The weather is still spectacular, for which we're very grateful.  The last couple of days we've encountered the fall color anticipated for the trip, seeing oak and maple trees of various hues, though the predominant color seems to be a rich golden yellow.

As my blog entry of this morning (for Day Four) indicated, we began our day at the Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, operated by the National Park Service as part of the National Archives.  Dail & I were both intrigued to read about the life of a president we heretofore knew little about.  Orphaned at age nine Herbert grew up to be an accomplished mining engineer, at one time earning the highest salary of anyone of his time ($33,000/year compared to $6,000 for the governor of California, as an example).  His pre-presidency days were known best for his various humanitarian efforts in leading relief efforts for, at various times, the Belgian people during WWI, Russian children following the war, flood victims of the Mississippi (1929), and some 500 stranded Americans in Europe at the start of WWII (Hoover, a millionaire by this time, personally loaned over a million of his own money to these individuals to help them get home; all but $400 of this was eventually repaid!).  Hoover went through a long period he called his Wilderness experience following his departure from the White House in 1933, but after WWII his reputation rebounded and he became quite the respected statesman in his latter years.

After two nights of camping next to heavy traffic (that we could hear all night long), tonight's camp, Hickory Hills, at Twin Lakes, MN, just inside the MN border with IO, is ten miles off the interstate, definitely in the country, and about as peaceful and quiet as it could possibly be.  We're going to love it!


This is Veritas -- discovering our world, making a difference!