One of the great blessings of this trip has been all of the friends who have been willing to host us along the way. Our sincere thanks go out to everyone who have let us invade their spaces. The further west we go, though, and the more our friend well dries up, it seems to us that we’ve got only one way to keep that trend going- making new friends.

We tried this once before, driving around in Michigan. It was spur of the moment- we were exploring what seemed like an empty dirt road and came upon a farmhouse. It seemed like some clearings along this dirt road would have made a decent campground, so I walked up to the farmhouse to see if I could charm the inhabitants into allowing us to set up someplace where we’d be out of their hair. Unfortunately, no one was home, so our exercise was a bust. But we gave ourselves points for trying.

Our next effort came In St. Paul, after the Twins game in Minneapolis. By now we had improved on our strategy- in addition to making sure there were humans to talk to, we decided a soft sell might work a bit better. Make some friends first. Have a nice conversation and get to know everybody. Then, upon mentioning we had no where to sleep, surely they would be excited to help. Foolproof!

Scott had discovered this place called “The Turf” that seemed promising, so we parked our bikes, walked in, and began the hunt. Scott started by approaching a group of people standing by the stage while I made conversation with the guys at the table next to ours. I should emphasize that this was a soft sell- we were just trying to make friends at this point. Nevertheless, neither effort was very successful. One group seemed uninterested and the other was a band from out of town. Which brings me to the fatal flaw in our plan- the bands. This bar had live music. LOUD live music. It’s very hard to convince someone you’re not a murderer when you have to scream at them in order to converse.

The rest of our efforts that night were similarly hopeless. All in all, it was another total bust. On the plus side we did have fun chatting and drinking and enjoying the music, but as far as the plan was concerned we just plain failed. Also, we realized later that between the cover and the beers, we spent 30 bucks trying to find a free alternative to a 20 dollar campsite. (At the place we did end up camping, we were treated to a local boy scout troop’s “rocket day” which was very exciting). So we came away with the following lessons:

* Only try to make friends at a place we would want to go to anyway.
* No live music.

Again though, points for trying. I figure it’s a numbers game. Unless we get hung up on the defeats, eventually we shall have glorious shining success.