Minnesota welcomes us with a perfect rail trail. Car-free, paved throughout or with a very good water-bound surface - no comparison to the bumpy road in western Canada. It has the same characteristically imperceptible gradients, except that the hills here are measured in dozens rather than hundreds of meters. With lakes and reed beds, forests and meadows, the landscape is varied - a reflection of the state’s diverse economy, where a little bit of everything is made.
We spend a day driving along the Sparta-Elroy Railtrail, where the history of the rails-to-trails initiative in the US began. Opened in 1967, this trail was a historic repurposing that attracted attention in many places - and, like the railroad once did, promised a new lease of life for the region. The route leads through picturesque forests, hollow alleyways in the sandstone and three impressive tunnels past pretty little villages. It’s amazing how well preserved the buildings dug by hand 150 years ago are! Nowadays, the trail is part of a much larger state trail network that stretches between Chicago and Saint Paul with many branches, just like the railroad once did.
Our first attempt to cross Lake Michigan fails. Heavy rain is forecast throughout the day, which is why we shift our driving time forward and reach Manitowoc in the morning instead of the evening. Just in time to find shelter from the downpour in a park with covered tables and a toilet. To our delight, public services in the States and Canada are excellent in this respect. There are public toilets in every community, usually with a well-maintained shelter, often even with electricity - which we appreciate as the hours of sunshine get shorter. The huge ‘small’ Great Lake soon almost looks like a sea: waves crashing against the shore, the water is churning, it stretches endlessly into the gray wall of clouds. The ferry remains at anchor this night, with only a note of apology stuck to the office door when we arrive at the jetty at midnight. We put up our tent without further ado and see what happens tomorrow.
In the supposedly hotly contested swing states we cross, we see even less of the election campaign than around Super Tuesday in California. Although numerous rallies take place at the same time, they are mainly in the big cities that we avoid. In the countryside, you only see rows and rows of Trump signs. Make America Great Again, Keep America Great or, surprisingly honest for a candidate who lies verifiably forty times in an average interview: “Proudly voting for the convicted felon”. In contrast, statements in favor of the Democrats - “Back the blue!” - or even Harris/Walz are rare. We wonder if the silent majority, the half of the houses that don’t have signs, predominantly vote for the Democrats? Or is Harris picking up the votes that make her chances look intact almost entirely in the cities?
Instead of current politics, we learn a lot about industrial history. About the central role of the railroad, which was once quite well developed here in the east - first to bring timber, later agricultural products to the Lakes. About the history of the Manitowoc ferry, on whose last traditional ship we cross, and where in its heyday 14 icebreakers sailed entire trains past the Chicago bottleneck. And of the crises of the formative heavy industry: the large car manufacturers, steel and food factories were for a long time the lifeline of cities such as Detroit, Chicago and Milwaukee. With their decline due to the relocation of jobs to cheaper developing countries, some of these cities lost their importance and up to a third of their population. Poverty is taking hold, crime is rising, the traditionally powerful trade unions are being weakened - and here it becomes visible again, the link to current developments, where the region is increasingly being seen as swing states.
But enough of politics, we see deer, muskrats, squirrels and other animals almost as often as MAGA signs. Twice a water snake quickly retreats, and magnificent cardinals flash fiery red in the thicket. To our astonishment, coyotes still howl at night, and when we spend the night by the water, we are woken several times by a loud splash. A beaver hitting the water with its club? A big fish hunting moths?
In the back and forth of the border region, we soon reach what is probably the most impressive border station between Canada and the US: Niagara Falls! The elemental force of water in all its power, no wonder it was used here for the first time to generate electricity for a distant city - Buffalo. We have the ingenuity of the migrant Nikola Tesla to thank for the transmission of alternating current, first demonstrated here in 1895 and then spread worldwide in an unstoppable wave.
We cross the bridge into New York and reach the Empire State, the last state on our journey. On the trail of the same name along the Erie Canal, we could almost imagine ourselves back in France. The locks are built a little differently, the bridges can be lifted in their entirety with pedestrian passage both above and below, the villages are characterized by immigration - these are just about the differences that are noticeable at first glance. And that you can probably - like a Norwegian religious refugee once did - travel the canal on skates for days in winter. Otherwise, we are in the same climate zone as at the beginning of our journey, the landscape is similar, and the canal is an engine of economic development on both sides of the Atlantic. Built in 1825, this technical masterpiece established New York’s status as the ‘Empire State’ and, with cheap transportation from the Midwest, laid the foundations for the city’s importance as the most important port on the East Coast. Only since the advent of steel steamboats, which could also navigate the less protected rivers, did the economic importance of the canal slowly decline and today it is mainly used for recreation on and around the water.
We enjoy a few almost car-free driving days and follow the water route a few hundred kilometers east to the Adirondack Mountains. We spend our last few days in the US canoeing through the hilly lake landscape for a change. Autumn atmosphere. Loons. Silence and starry skies. An island all to ourselves..