Tourist Time - AM 1

Well, after an interesting night with many adventures and no sleep we've finally arrived in Minneapolis. We're parked in an Ikea parking garage waiting for stores to open since our timing got pushed ahead of schedule. But let's start at the beginning of the story so far...

It seems like I last posted a week ago but really it was only 13 hours. I left Brandon an hour ahead of schedule and when I arrived in Winnipeg at 9 Shawn was waiting in the car, ready to go. I was a bit ticked since we were supposed to finish a couple things before leaving BUT with his mom pushing for us to get on the road and his insistence I agreed and away we went.

Our first problem surfaced before we even left Winnipeg, my brand new Inverter from Canadian Tire quit on us. That left us with only my half charged laptop battery to last us not even all the way through one movie we started watching. It quit just after we got into the States.

Getting INTO the states was an entirely stressful experience. After being questioned in our vehicle for several minutes they brought us into a garage where they questioned us further and searched the car while we sat in a small white room with security glass looking out. It wasn't anymore worrisome than a bad day at work but still, would've been nice for them to just let us through! Anyways, about a half hour later we were free to continue into the states and away we went.

We stopped for gas in Grand Forks and sped through Fargo, before entering Minnesota. All along the way I continued to swear about my damn Inverter so we stopped at the first rest stop in Minnesota and charged my laptop up to 9% so we could watch a bit more of the movie. That charge didn't last us through the end of the movie either but before we knew it we found our salvation. A 24hr Wal-Mart in some small town along the road with 100W Inverters on sale, hurray! We hooked things up and finished watching "Death to Smoochy" and also watched "Rat Race" along with several Simpsons episodes.

About a half hour ago we started hitting some heavy traffic and since I was driving at the time I was left with the enviable task of navigating the crazy drivers and construction that seems to spring from nowhere here. But we've arrived safe and sound in Minneapolis and after a bit of a rest over here we're going to continue on with our trip to Chicago!