Minnesota

Heading East from North Dakota we start seeing more trees and some small hills in Minnesota.  Finding a place to camp in Minnesota on the weekend in August is very difficult.  All the Minnesotans are out with their trailers, boats, canoes, kayaks, kids, fishing poles and dogs (love the dogs) camping for the weekend.  We stayed near Duluth one night on the St. Louis River but it is a muddy, stinky, mess.  Walking around the local area it is moldy smelling with old houses and old sidewalks grown over with grass. I am reminded of my childhood in rural Connecticut and thinking if you grow up here, you know no different.

The next night we find ourselves at a casino in Hinckley, Minnesota.  In an attempt to get a good deal on a hotel room Tim fills out a form to get a player’s club card.  It just so happens it is his birthday and they give you a room for $54 on your birthday, what a deal!  Tim also won $7.50 on some video poker, so a win all the way around.

We then decide to head back to Bemidji which we passed through earlier and it seemed like a great town, with a natural food co-op, brewery, Paul Bunyan, biking around Bemidji Lake and a college.  Turned off by the heat and humidity, we then head north to Grand Marais which is right on Lake Superior and close to the Canadian border.  As promised, it is much cooler in Grand Marais but still high humidity, cool and damp as they say.  The Grand Marais town campground is right on Lake Superior, which is an unbelievably huge lake by the way.  There is a marina there as well.  On our second day we get up early and wait in line to get a lake side camp site, it was worth the wait, very nice.  The town itself is within walking distance of the campground and is like a seaside tourist town with restaurants and shops, so here we go again blowing the budget on dining out.  The lake is so large with crashing waves it feels as if you are at the ocean.  We managed to get in a local hike near the lake one day. Unfortunately, it is now raining and tomorrow we plan to start moving toward Indiana for the RV repairs.

A local food in Minnesota I keep seeing is wild rice.  I had a wild rice burger at one meal and wild rice toast at another.  So what’s with this wild rice?  Well apparently it is not rice at all but a grain that grows in the cold waters of Minnesota lakes and rivers.  There are specific rules about harvesting wild rice in public waters. Wild rice was the staple in the diet of the Chippewa and Sioux Indians,native to the region.

If I did not come to Minnesota I would never experience the vast ocean like feeling of Lake Superior.  I am reminding myself to experience the uniqueness of each area and to stay open-minded and not compare everything to my former Scottsdale lifestyle or the mountains of Colorado which have been romanticized in my mind because of so many great memories of trips watching the USA Pro Challenge (a professional bike race), summiting two Colorado 14ers myself – La Plada (14,343 feet) and Mt Elbert (14,439 ft), Tim and I cycling up Maroon Bells road and visiting great breweries like Steamworks in Durango… ahhh Colorado….