While Jack is relaxing in the jacuzzi (we are in a suite tonight which we got for the cost of a regular room), I will again relate some of our latest visits to interesting places.

We did a lot of driving yesterday and got to a motel in Alexandria, MN too late for me to try to write anything.  Our driving was broken up with a visit to the Jeffers Petroglyphs in Comfrey, IA.  Out in the middle of a prairie, there are reddish, relatively flat rocks - Sioux quartzite.  It is on these that the drawings were made with chert - another type of rock that is harder than the quartzite.  Some of the 'drawings' are believed to date back thousands of years.  Unfortunately we were there at the wrong time of day (the best time to view the petroglyphs is early evening as the sun is setting - something the Tour Book didn't mention) so we could see only a few of the drawings, some of them are believed to be thousands of years old.  The area apparently was a gathering place for the native peoples during the summer months where they renewed family ties and friendships.  The tour guide,  a trained archeologist, has spoken directly with some of the Native American elders, and has gathered a lot of information from them - some of which he related during our tour.

Thunderbird

Turtle

Circle

Today we spent about four hours at the Runestone Museum in Alexandria, a museum about Vikings.  The Vikings used writing mainly to record very special events.  Their letters are called 'runes'.  Each rune is made with straight lines and sharp angles which made it easier to carve on stone and wood as Vikings did not have paper.

Runestone found in the roots of an aspen tree in 1898 on Olaf Ohman's farm in Kensington, MN

A few letters in the Viking alphabet

As noted above, the Kensington Runestone was found in 1898 and is one of the things that supports evidence of Viking exploration in North America in 1362 - long before Columbus.  It is believed that at least some of the Vikings came from Iceland down through what is today the St. Lawrence seaway and Great Lakes.

Tonight we are staying in Carlton, MN, just outside Duluth.  Tomorrow we hope to find a campsite along the shores of Lake Superior, north of Duluth, and take a few days to just relax.  Don't be surprised if there are no blog entries for a few days.  We doubt that there will be internet service, or cell phone service for that matter, where we hope to be.