Today we left Bayport to travel north-west to get to MoD’s school reunion destination.

Detroit Lakes.

About 2 hours into the drive I regretted my hasty decision to reject the kind offer from our hostess with the mostess, to take some home made muffin roadies.

Driving past a number of Starbucks signs we ended up waiting a little too long to get my second coffee for the day. (Yes, of course MoD had stopped at the first Starbucks.  Don’t be ridiculous. He has seen me without my morning soy latte. And friends. It ain’t pretty). 

So two hours into our drive time I was starvin’ marvin’.

And naturally looking for a bathroom (toilet in Aussie terms).

We pulled into a little gas station (servo) which doubled as the local supermarket, so we could pick through the food offerings. Coffee by this stage was completely out of the question, given it was close to 2pm.

I decided on a ‘healthier choice’ than MoD. Something I likened to a McCains pizza pocket. With cheese and ham. Something one might think was a sandwich. Something that was definitely not anything like a pizza pocket I can assure you.

Definitely not cheese. Definitely not ham. I should have gone with the good ole’ fried chicken that MoD chose. Surprisingly not full of fat, and surprisingly delish.

We got to Detroit Lakes in good time for a rest-up and meal before the 6pm meet and greet school reunion. 

Detroit Lakes Minnesota, is both a winter and summer holiday destination attracting large numbers of tourists all year round. Founded in 1871 the city is apparently about 26.47km (sq) of land and 12.90km (sq) of water. I am told that the lake freezes over in winter, they put their ice fishing huts on the lake and then drive their trucks across to ice fish. The thought of that is beyond my comprehension. It’s a huge expanse of water and I can’t quite imagine it. I have of course demanded photos come winter. I am also told they only lose one or two trucks a year into the lake. Apparently that’s not such a bad loss. Natural attrition. 

We are staying at a fairly nice hotel in DL although it is about 2.5km from the reunion destination hotel. 

Once we had our nanna nap we headed across the road to the local bar to engage in some food before what could be a rather large drinking night. Although, of course, we are very well behaved as you would expect.

It was happy hour at Hub21 🤣 wahoooooo!

And we got 10% discount due to our choice of hotel.

Double wahooooo! 

I ordered my usual vodka/coke with a stern warning to make it a single. Hell. I don’t know what a single is here but it sure ain’t what I’m used too. Single here is, what, a triple? Maybe 100ml of vodka! Take the top off your head. To be fair ….. I am a pathetic drinker. 

We also ordered food, given the info from the FB school reunion suggested there would only be snacks on tonight. 

Once again, our version of snacks doesn’t cut it. Turns out snacks meant our version of a full meal.

Not knowing this of course, we ordered up big with the fried sandwiches.

Yep. Fried.

Yum.

Plus we ordered kumura (sweet potato) chips. Fortunately they didn’t arrive. 

Happy hour ended and so did the clientele, who vanished rather quickly.

Probably a good thing. We don’t want no super spreader.(We kept our distance from everyone and wear our masks when we go anywhere. It’s interesting being a minority). 

MoD was in ice hockey heaven as the bar tender had ice hockey on the TV AND played ice hockey AND talked ice hockey.

I wondered if we were landed here for the night. 

But no, once we inhaled the festival of fried food, we thought It may be a good idea to walk to the reunion. So walk we did.

The houses on the lake front are pretty impressive.

On the lake front side, the post boxes all stretch out on angles to make it easy for the postie I guess. I can see me on my bike plus a few accidents with that one. The other side of the road, the non lake front, wasn’t so special. They had normal post boxes.

The fire hydrants had big poles sticking out from them. MoD tells me that is because when it snows they need to find them.

Finally got to the school reunion for our second evening meal of the day 🐷

What an awesome group of people. Not many left to be fair. We haven’t looked at the memorial board yet but I believe that will be something to view tomorrow night. A little confronting perhaps. 

Much laughter and discussion about who, what, when, how. 

A fair bit of talk about the good old days, ‘pacifically’ 1977.

Clearly they got that wrong. According to the sign it was actually 1997. Which makes these guys much younger than they think they are.

Hell they are having hip and knee replacements early then. Yep, some talk about that.

Now I don’t really think we Aussies do this. I think, we Aussies are fairly Americanised, given many of our favourite TV shows are possibly American based. But the American’s don’t know that much about us Aussies.

Best question of the night was “Do you go opal hunting?”

“Hell yeah! And you know those things that hop? The kangaroos? We use them to gather the opals we find. Their pouches are pretty damn useful”.

No. 

I didn’t say that. I’m not that quick. I only thought of that later.

I just laughed and laughed. 

It was a late night.

Photos of Detroit Lakes tomorrow…..