papa's in bed with his britches on Today is the day John and I are going on our field trip. It looks cloudy and like it might rain, but I'm hoping it clears. Or just doesn't rain. Either one of those would be fine. John is writing an article for work, so that means pictures, and he says, we will own the pictures, so of course I can post them. We're going to a part of the state where I've never been, so I'm excited. Driving around Minnesota is a lot of fun. I don't know why, but an hour in the car seems like 15 minutes. In Michigan, for some reason, an hour in the car seemed like...an hour and a half. Maybe because in this part of the state, you can look straight down the road and see an hour's worth of destination...whereas in Michigan you're up and down and through the woods and over the lake and so forth...I don't know. I'm always like..."Minnesota's all flat!", and back in the day, when Minnesota to me was "Duluth", I always thought it was more woodsy than Michigan. Well, I'm sure the northern part is, but I'm in the south, and I just never expected it to be like this. Right now, I live in a river valley, so it's all treey and hilly, so, what makes it interesting is, go east or west for 10 miles or so, and you're in tornado country. It really does have a beauty. John gets upset with me (a little bit) when I go on and on about the flatness, but it's just nothing like I've ever seen before.


Once, my first trip to TROLL land (the Mitten, usually the only part of the state labeled "Michigan" on the map)...oh, funny story. Sorry. My ecology book had a map of the USA, right? Well, the USA was orange or something, Mexico was green, and Canada was green. Do you know what color they had the U.P. of Michigan? Green...like Canada! I was a dork and brought my homework with me on the jazz band tour that year, so I showed my little friend John (who was crushing on me hard, and I was just starting to figure it out!). I showed him, and it was luckily a huge conversation starter...we laughed for a good half hour...I even got to go into my tin can sauna story, and then another girl went into a story about how her porch caught on fire. Good times. Anyway, parts of the Mitten were the same as this part of Minnesota...flat and corn everywhere. I had no idea.

Utah is a beautiful state. They all are, I suppose. I've only seen a handful. I've seen the Rockies from the plane, and I wanted to jump out and become a mountain man.

I have to eat some breakfast before I fall over. I woke up at 4 a.m. (We were still at the movies at 12:00 am!) starving! I almost threw up.  ¶ 9:57 AM