Day 11 – Duluth to Grand Forks

The day began by waking at 5 am to a most beautiful red sunrise over Lake Superior.

We learned that our overall placing for yesterday was at 27. A little better than the previous day.
The sky soon turned, as the saying goes “Red in the morning, shepherds warning”
It began to lightly rain at the start out, which for us in Betty was at 07.43 hours.
We made our way out of the city heading West stopping just for some car shopping, for the likes of oil and other additives.
It was still cold at 9.00 although the sun had emerged from a cloud receding sky.
329kms for the first leg of the day without any events to undertake just long way driving on some side roads discovered by the ERA organisation. Quiet roads with natural scenery which in many ways replicated NZ countryside. There were many unsealed roads of smooth contour and surface conditions and we ate up the miles.

Steve put the hood down when the sun stayed out and we enjoyed a ride into Park Rapids.
Uneventful to this point but after lunch there were two regularity sections.
The first was an amendment to replace the published regularity, and along with this usually means misinterpretations.
We didn’t do too badly.
The second Regularity segment, also amended, the navigator had difficulty in locating the designated side road and half an hour later just in time before the timekeepers were about to pack up we made the start line. Only just!
We did ok again until the end on a side road we missed the turn. Lack of experience on keeping the driver informed well in advance of the event.
Then onto the last leg home a distance of 168kms. The weather was really good and having the top down was great. All through which an analysis of what we had done wrong and what to do next time. A lot of sole searching.
Betty performed without issue. She just purred along. A great car.

This last leg was a bit boring on concrete paved motorway most of the distance.
Got to the final check-in at the hotel in Grand Forks in North Dakota, three minutes before our set time. Just in time.
Again there was no need for the GPS in this instance although we did need it to locate a petrol station earlier in the day.
We’re a little buggered. A long day.
Saw quite a few deer on the road today, one of which sprang out onto the road from the verge and just managed to cross in front of us without being hit. Lovely to see so many animals like this in the wild.