Detroit Lakes, MN

Our next move was a long one (by our standards) to west-central Minnesota. We stayed near Detroit Lakes at a nice resort in the center of hundreds of lakes. We don't do water stuff so we didn't take advantage of the water aspect. We did go to Itasca State Park to see the Headwaters of the Mississippi River. The river's humble beginning flows out of Lake Itasca as a small stream about 12 feet wide. It flows north for about 30 miles before slowly turning on its southward journey. Fun fact - in the visitor center it says a drop of rain in Lake Itasca takes 90 days to reach the Gulf of Mexico. In addition to checking out the headwaters we hiked about 3 miles on a woodsy trail partially along the lake.

We also visited the Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge and took a short 2.6 mile hike. We saw some Trumpeter Swans on a lake but nothing else out of the ordinary. Unfortunately the thing we'll probably remember the most is how the deer flies were so annoying they made the hike seem like 10 miles.

Other than that we took time to do normal "home" type stuff like deep cleaning, waxing the truck, reorganizing stuff, reading and just chilling. There were several days where the wind was so bad (steady 25-30 mph) it was miserable to be outside so we didn't do much those days.

We are moving on to North Dakota next and have some neat stuff planned there so come back to see how it turns out.

Headwaters of the Mighty
Mississippi River

First 50 yards of the river

The river crosses the road just outside
the park