1250 Miles Later

I'm in Minnesota! Land of a thousand lakes or something like that! It took over a thousand miles to get here so that definitely counts for something.

I'm pretty sure that the MCT Employee Handbook includes a clause that says "Thou shalt not see other TADs without taking photographic evidence," so the first thing Jas, Whitney, Molly and I did before shipping off again this morning was take a selfie.

We then said goodbye for a bit as we climbed into our separate trucks and hit the road. We left at 8am but quickly transitioned into Central Time and lost an hour, so if we'd been smart, we would have left earlier, but oh well. Less than two minutes into our drive this morning, I said something that I know will haunt me for the rest of the tour (in the best way possible). Jas asked me if I needed to stop and get the ice scraper and I said, "No, I'm fine, I'll live." This, of course, implied that if something were to happen us, I would survive and Jas would not. I don't know how I could possibly know this in advance but I do know that it might not be the best way to start off a partnership! Like I said, however, it is definitely going to be a recurring joke because it has popped up at least six other times today.

Speaking of jokes, the spirit animal of our two day drive were several SNL sketches based on bad high school theatre because some of it rings all too true for us every now and then. Here is a link to one of those videos because it's too good not to share: http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/high-school-theatre-show-with-reese-witherspoon/2864976

I drove all the way to Fargo where we met back up with Molly and Whitney for lunch at Qdobe. I found myself a snapsticker and Molly snapchatted a lovely photo of my thinking face without my knowledge... After lunch, we said goodbye to our friends and Jas took over the driving duties. We also changed the icon on the GPS to a burrito in honor of what we'd had for lunch.

I didn't realize how close Fargo was to the Minnesota border, because we were in Minnesota within five minutes of getting back on the road. That did not, however, mean that we were close to Red Wing, because Red Wing is basically on the Minnesota/Wisconsin border, so we had quite a way to go.

I slept for a large portion of the rest of the drive. The sun set at like 5:30, which was pretty lame. On our way to Red Wing, we passed Rosemount, MN, which doesn't seem like a big deal except that it is the inspiration for the fictional Mount Rose, MN from Drop Dead Gorgeous. I tried to take a picture of the sign as we drove by but in true Drop Dead Gorgeous fashion, it was a blurry, hot mess.

The rest of our drive to Red Wing went quickly but not quickly enough. Both of us were pretty spent at that point and went back and forth quoting the more offensive parts of the high school theatre SNL sketches.

Once we got to Red Wing, it became a count of how many times we could see the Red Wing logo. Even snapchat got in on the fun with their Red Wing geotag! We checked into our hotel and went to the Red Wing Brewery for dinner because we obviously had to pick the restaurant with the town's name in their name. The brewery had beer (obviously) and pizza. At the brewery, we were able to find the 2015 tourism guide for Red Wing, except that we realized that even though it was full of wonderful suggestions, it was absolute trash since it now 2016! Ok, that's a joke and there is tons of stuff to do here apparently!

Now I've spent the past few hours lying in my hotel room and taking far longer than should be necessary to write out this post. I'm now going to publish it without rereading any of it because I'm tired and need to get to bed so I can have an awesome first Monday of the tour tomorrow!

*Also, I found out why Jas is "Jas" for everyone who has been wondering. For those of you who are now wondering why people would be wondering about Jas's name it is because Jas's real name isn't actually Jas, but Justin. His initials are J.A.S. and there were two other Justins in his kindergarten class and then history was made.