Walking in Winona

Last Monday, October 20, I did the walk in Winona MN. This one has been on list for 2 years and it is ending on October 31. I wanted to do this one primarily to be able to mark off Winona County in my Walking the Minnesota Counties book. There are 87 counties in Winona and doing this means I have walked in 33 counties -- so obviously I have a few to go.

Winona is along the Mississippi River so that means it is one of the older cities in Minnesota, since it was founded when the river was the freeway. Winona is located in Winona County.The county was established in 1854 and the city was incorporated in 1857.This is the rare areas where the county capital has the same name as the county.

Winona is named after Winona, a cousin of the last chief of the Winnebago, Wabasha. The Winnebago were moved from Iowa to this area of Minnesota and then to Long Prairie, a place I walked in September and have written about in a previous blog.

First I was going there on another day. But in the morning of that day, I find something wrong with toilet in my apartment and had to wait for the maintenance service to come and fixed it. October 20 seemed to be the wrong day too. I was wide awake until 3:00 AM and then woke up at 7:00. It didn't seem to be a good idea to drive 2 hours on 4 hours of sleep. I went back to bed and woke up at 11:30 or so. I decided to do the walk. So I made a hotel reservation since I had to be in Rochester the next morning and didn't seem like a good idea to drive the same roads twice!

So I got to Winona about 2:00 in the afternoon. The walk started from the Winona Historical Society. This is located in the building that used to be a lumber office.

The tractor below was in the lobby.

The museum looks both beautiful and interesting. I would like to go back another time to see this and another museum in the city.

I walked along the Winona County Courthouse.

When I was out of graduate school I worked 3 months for the Winona County Public Health Nursing Service. Then for 3 years I taught public health nursing for Winona State University and had my students in this building, too.

Soon I was at the foot of the bridge that crosses the Mississippi River. The walk went across this bridge as part of a new Volksmarch program called Crossing Borders.

I didn't know one could walk across the bridge.

Above is a view of the Mississippi from the middle of the bridge.

Here are some house boats too. Winona is noted for these.

I walked to and across the border crossing....

and then turned around and walked back to the city. The scenery is lovely, but there is a huge amount of traffic on the bridge. The next bridge south is for I-90 about 20 miles south and the bridge north is in Wabasha, about equally that far north; thus this bridge carries a lot of traffic.

In the city the walk path took me to the campus of Winona State.

It is so much bigger than when I worked there that I am always lost on the campus. I found the gazebo as directed.

I was amused to find someone using a laptop inside. It was, however, a beautiful day to be outside.

I found this monument.

The sign on the stone below says the name is Symbol of America and is the work of M. Nardini. From here the directions didn't follow the landmarks so I set out to find the place I parked my car.

This is a common view on the west end of Winona. The money here came from the lumber industry. The workers in the lumber industry were Kashubians from Poland. The east side of town has very small houses, but a wonderful decorated Polish church.

However, the steeple below is from another church.

The steeple looked so beautiful against the autumn blue sky.

Found the car and then to a restaurant for a sandwich and then found my hotel. It turned out to be very comfortable and had a nice breakfast in a cheerful breakfast room the next morning.

I drove to Rochester and had a lovely time visiting with some former public health nursing colleagues.

Glad I finally did this walk. Hope you all enjoy the pictures.