Bemidgi to Walker

Before we left Bemidgi this morning, we back tracked a couple of miles to see their version of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox.  We were going to do that yesterday as we came into town, but decided against it because of the rain.  Here is what we saw.

I personally liked better the other likenesses we saw as we were riding north, but now I know.  There was also a statue of a Native American in the same park as Paul.  This statue was made out of iron & is bigger than life size.

Then we started our trip to the next trail.  That means much of the day we were on country roads.  They were well paved with wide shoulders and a rumble strip to alert any drivers who may accidentally drift.  I felt very safe.  A lot of the roads we have been on carry this designation.

We are close to the headwaters of the Mississippi River, and it is a tourist attraction for many.  We probably crossed the Mississippi 5 or 6 times today.  In this territory the river does not run straight south as we are accustomed to thinking about it.  It runs north out of Lake Itasca, then west, then south, then east etc before it makes the big turn south towards New Orleans.  It is also much smaller as you can see in this picture.

I do understand why Minnesota is called the land of 10,000 lakes.  Here is another perspective on that with a little different look than some pictures I have posted before.

 There is another piece of the landscape that I have seen other places before, but today for the first time on this trip.  A large swampy area with thousands of dead trees.  They aren't really large trees, but big enough to have grown for 10 - 30 years I would guess.  Makes me wonder what caused all of them to die.

One human interest picture today from the road.  I choose to call it the tire fence, but the tires are spaced out so far they won't hold anything in, and they are sunk in the ground about 1/2 their diameter, but the thing that made it picture worthy is that every other tire is painted either purple or blue.  Why?  I have no idea.

After about 25 miles on the roads, we did come to a trail that took us to our overnight stop in Walker.  Tomorrow we have a full day of roads before we come to the next big trail adventure.

48 miles today.