Took
a proactive stance against waking up chilled last night: wore socks, shorts and
fleece to bed along with the shirt I wear for PJs. Worked like a charm!!
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Several years ago when we were still using
our bike trailer for camping in Arizona Kim bought me a bucket with a seat on
it so I didn’t have to walk to the camp bathroom in the middle of the night if
the need arose. It came along with us on
this trip and took its place of honor in the corner of the tent. And I hafta say that it’s still a struggle to
walk 3 steps to the bucket when the air is chilly and the bed is warm.
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We left ourselves 4 days to get home so Kim
could stop to fish if he found a spot. Last
night Kim changed out his fish line
from 4 lb. to 15 lb. braided. Now he’s
ready to catch some big ones as well as the pan fish.
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Breaking camp was easy peasy this
morning. I basically took care of
packing up the inside of the tent and Kim took care of all the other outside
items that go in the trailer and then because he has a specific way of doing it
he packed the trailer. We were out of
there just after 11 a.m.
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Bemidji turned out to be the endpoint of
this ride. We have 4 days to get home
and just under 650 miles if we drive the same route as we came in on. Not my choice
if I can help it. So last night I started looking at possible routes back to
Michigan and where we might stay along the way. And in the process of looking I saw that
Brainerd, MN is south of Bemidji, still in line with going across Wisconsin to
the Upper Peninsula AND has a Paul Bunyan statue. And from Brainerd we could angle back north to
a KOA outside of Duluth. Kim was game so
I reserved a cabin at the KOA (no electric tent sites available) and started
planning. We now had a destination, a
route and things to see along the way….we’d be ready to rock n roll as soon as
we broke camp this morning.
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I feel the need to say here that I really
don’t have any great affinity for Paul Bunyan but we’re here in the land of all
things Paul so I’m trying to take advantage of all the Roadside America fun to
be had. Because who knows if or when
we’ll be back. Seize the moment!!
Anyway, a couple of other Roadside America
oddities popped up and wouldn’t you know they’re right near Brainerd. I wrote down the addresses and planned to plug
them into Rapunzel as we went.
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Today’s first stop was a somewhat recent and smaller version of Paul and Babe…not going to break any records with this one but it was nicely done. We got our pictures and then moved onto the next stop which was in Baxter, a town that butted right up against Brainerd.
Our second stop was to see a statue of Babe
that was painted Elvis style. Kind of cheesy but worth a picture. Then it was onto a nearby Dunham’s to buy a
fishing license which as it turns out Dunham’s doesn’t sell. Seems a Holiday Gas Station is the only place
to buy a fishing license in Brainerd so while we were waiting for our pizza I
did a search. Three Holiday stations in
the area…two would require backtracking and one was not far away in the
direction we were going. It seemed to be
on a side street so I suggested Kim plug it into Rapunzel and away we went.
When it seemed to me that we had gone too
far with no Holiday station in sight, I radioed Kim to ask if he’d plugged it
in. “No, because I find it rather strange
that a Holiday gas station wouldn’t be on the main drag.” So we drove on looking
for the Holiday and soon we were heading out of Brainerd…no Holiday, no fishing
license and about 15 miles farther down the road I realized that there was NO
PAUL BUNYAN! Well, I’m sure Paul is
there, it’s just that in our focus to fill our bellies with good food and find
a fishing license we forgot to look for the very thing that brought us to
Brainerd in the first place. Agh!!!
Kim offered to turn around but not far down
the road I knew I’d been through Brainerd before and probably have a picture of
Paul somewhere at home. How do I know
that I’ve been in Brainerd? My memory was jolted when I saw a statue of an ox
outside a diving store that had a scuba mask on and was painted like it was
wearing scuba gear. See that once, make
a point of turning around to take a picture and you’ll remember it when you see
it again. So it’s obvious to me that I
have been this way before.
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We continued on down the road...beautiful
drive with lots of lakes on both sides of the road. Finally found a gas station (not a Holiday)
that sold fishing licenses so now it was just a matter of finding Mille Lacs
Lake, a big lake on the route we were taking to the Cloquet/Duluth KOA. It looked like it’d have fishing opportunities.
About 30 miles out of Brainerd Kim radios
that he hadn’t told Rapunzel to take us to the KOA so he hoped we were on the right
road still. Well, we haven’t turned off the road so why wouldn’t it still be the
right road? But his statement made
me a bit nervous especially because we hadn’t encountered Mille Lacs Lake yet. After a few minutes mulling it over I suggested
that we pull over to check with Rapunzel.
Came to the little town of Emily where Kim
went into a store for bait and I checked the map. What the hell?! We were 40
miles north of Mille Lacs Lake! How did we do that? Decided to keep going toward the KOA from
where we were. Minnesota brags about
having 10,000 lakes…surely we’d find one that was fishable.
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I checked the map just to find out how we
got off track in the Brainerd area. The
road forked and we went left; should’ve gone right. Next time….😎
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Monday’s
miles: 236
Total miles: 1,081
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