…oh, look, a wizard who needs to hire us
CritterCon 2025 (#18)
Trip Day Four
In which we cross Minnesota, enter Our Beloved Northern Neighbor, see less civilization than we hoped, go back to nature, show some locals how fishing is done, and let kids read us bedtime stories.
Small children children woke me up at 5:15 in the morning to tell me that we had baby ducks and rabbits in the Zoo Room. And so at 5:30 I was groggily looking at duclings and bunnies. Thankfully, Mrs Hudson and her helpers came and rounded up the kids so I could go back to bed for an hour.
Once again, I’m just going to try to do a quick list of the day’s events.
1: We left Grand Forks and, once again taking local roads, headed north, then east. We passed through a few of those places that are still listed on maps, but aren’t there anymore. Let me tell you, 61 years ago, they weren’t much there either. We did take a pic of Carpenter’s Corner, because it had a tiny one pump gas station and also was not a field of whatever the hell they were growing.
2: Along the way across all this boredom, we watched classic Warner Brothers cartoons from Earth 1-T, which included many with Daffy Duck parodies of famous movies. The parody of Public Enemy was pretty funny.
3: When we got to Thief Rover Falls, an actual fair sized town, we straight to a brand new attraction open less than a month: The Fairy Town. It’s a big side yard of a house that has lots of little houses and stuff and about 300 little fairy figures made by local craftfolks, presumably during the cold ass winters.
It was cute, interesting, and the kids loved it. The only merch they had were bumper stickers, so we bought a dozen. Oh, by the way, don’t go trying to find Fairy Town in 2025. In 1987, the owners packed it up and moved to Florida, but never got around to reopening it.
4: 2 hours and several chats/videogame challenges/snack times later, after having passed through countless town pretenders, we reached Roosevelt, Minnesota. It had a store, a gas station, and a 12 foot tall tree stump carved to look like a bear. We bought sodas at the store, took pix of the bear, then continued on. A few minutes later, just before lunch, we were hit with a song & dance break. This time it was “Raise Your Glass” by Pink, and we were all dressed up as pandas. Fun, but strange.
5: It took a bit less than an hour for us to get from Rooesevelt to our first stop in Canada, the town of Emo. Amazingly, it looked like most of the small towns we’d beeen through already, but with Canadian spelling and the decimal system. Also, we didn’t see much emo in Emo. Gabe remarked that maybe we should look for a town called Goth or Stoner.
6: Next, we got to Fort Francis, a goodsized city on the opposite side of the border from International Falls, Minnesota. It had a small “Friendship Museum” that highlighted what great pals Canada & the US are. I reckon it’s closed down in 2025. The tour was quick, but the did have t-shirts and other stuff, so you know we bought it.
7: Ourt next stop being Thunder Bay, 4+ hours away, we decided to stop and take advantage of all the forests and the fact that you pass some body of water every 3 minutes. Mainly, this meant getting into wolf bodies and running around across a few square miles of Canada. It was lots of fun, but after an hour or so, we got back on The Bus and I told Data to cloak us and take us up 90 feet and speed along at about 90 mph. And then we all just sat around in our regular bodies, talking and stuff.
8: But about 45 minutes later, we saw a big sign advertising a fishing derby. Mara wanted to check it out (because otteroid), so we did. There was only a half hour left, and when Mara asked about fishing, they told her it wasn’t for ladies and it was too late to catch a fish anyway.
About 2 seconds after I saw Blue roll his eyes, Mara said “Oh really? Well, how about I try anyway?” She they proceeded to remove her dress and then jump into the water in her undies. Now, she was in human form, but she’s stilll an otter, so after about 8 minutes, during which many of those assembled thought she had drowned, she pops up out of the water holding a huge fish. She then had it weighed, we took pix, and she tossed it back into the lake. As she put her dress back on, she told the goggle eyed anglers, “That’s how we fish where I come from, boys.”
As we drove off, I think those guys were still struck dumb.
9: So now we are in Thunder Bay, having had dinner, chatted, and then did a turnabout where the kids told us bedtime stories that they made up. These included such classics as…
The Little Mouse That Was Very Smart
Popsy & Momsy Go To Town
The 6 Good Little Children
The Stinky Old Man
and The Good Dog Finds Some Hamburgers.
And now, I’m off to bed. More trip stuff later.
Destination Sign When We Started: Rock & Roll Heaven
Destination Sign When We Stopped: Cowtown
QM Radio Station: SNRT Radio Free Snortville
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