01-Apr-2001 -- While in Minneapolis for the Final Four of college basketball we once again decided to attempt to visit a confluence point. I was watching the list of available points near the Twin Cities as the date for my trip got closer. When I left Alaska for Minnesota I took the list of Minnesota points with me and had used mapquest.com to map out approximate routes. On Sunday morning, after enjoying two great college games Saturday evening, we headed out under mostly sunny skies and temperatures in the low 40's. We started out from our hotel in Bloomington, just south of Minneapolis, at about 11 am. Our goal was to visit three points on this day (see 46N95W and 46N96W). The weather Sunday was actually warmer then it had been since we arrived on Friday and it turned out to be a nice day, at least if you are from Alaska. We traveled around the Twin Cities on I-494 to I-94 and headed northwest. We took Minnesota 101 to the north and the US169 north. Following our instructions we went west on Mille Lacs County Rd 21 which becomes Morrison County Rd 39. Using the GPS, the Mapquest.com instructions, and a Minnesota Atlas & Gazetteer we turned due north on a gravel farm road that seemed closest to the point (east-west wise). We drove north just over a mile and found a wide spot in the road right across from a house where the GPS said we should go due west to the point a short distance. Much to my surprise there were tracks in the one foot deep snow leading away from the road. And not just one set, but enough to beat a path right to the point. Clearly we were not the first to arrive at this point but I'm posting anyways since the other visit hasn't shown up yet. Ryan thought the tracks were just hunters or something but since they wandered around and then ended right where my GPS said the point would be I assured him someone had beat us to this point. And they had then come back there enough to form a path directly to the point. I tried to capture this in photos (posted) but it may not be obvious in the photos. We left this point and headed west towards on 39. The disappointment of not being first was shortlived and forgotten when we found an all you can eat spaghetti feed for lunch in the nearby town of Pierz. It was a fund raiser for the local Boy Scouts for their trip to Yellowstone, planned for this August. We were happy to help them down some spaghetti and they plied us with extra brownies as we hit the road for 46N95W.