Also deserving is this one of the Canada geese gathering at dusk. No matter how often people chase the geese away, they keep coming back and are multiplying each year. We were told each goose deposits 2 1/2 pounds a day which makes a real mess of things.
Today we had a very nice 160 mile drive to LaSalle Lake State Recreation Area. On the way, we crossed the St. Louis River which meanders southeast to divide Duluth and Superior, Wisconsin. It's considerably smaller here.
St Louis River 20 miles northwest of Duluth and Superior
The only town we went through which was of any size was Grand Rapids with a population of 11,211. It's about the size of Boone, NC, but Boone looks bigger (maybe because it doubles in size during the school year when Appalachian State's students are in town). Grand Rapids was founded as a logging town in the late 1800's, the northern-most point reachable by steamboats on the Mississippi River. The rapids for which the town was named were a barrier to further river transport. They no longer exist because they've been under the Blandin Paper Mill's dam for over 100 years.
Grand Rapids, Minnesota
A number of notable people were born in Grand Rapids. Other than sports stars, the most famous was Judy Garland who was born here in 1922 as Frances Ethel Gumm. There's a Judy Garland Museum in town.
Our campground is truly out in the middle of nowhere, about 30 minutes from Bemidji, a town of around 14,000. Bemidji is the central hub of three Indian reservations (Red Lake, White Earth and Leech Lake). We'll be going into Bemidji tomorrow to do laundry and get the truck's oil changed.
Our site was really difficult to get into. The campground's road along with the site pad itself are very narrow with trees close to the pad, a tree and pole at the entrance to the site, and a ditch on the side of the road across from the site which was impossible to avoid. Jim had to use 4WD to get out of the ditch but that made the truck and RV much harder to turn. He did a masterful job of getting into the site without hitting anything which was miraculous because our walkie-talkies failed to work right at that point so I didn't know he couldn't hear me screaming at him to stop. There was no way to get the RV positioned so we could use our awning without rolling up tree branches in it when putting it away but at least we can move our chairs to the shade under the offending tree. One good thing about this place is that it has excellent wifi....at least so far....so we can give the hotspot a rest for a few days.
Tree branches in the awning and very unlevel site
As soon as we got set up we discovered the water pressure out of the kitchen faucet was barely a trickle. Jim worked on it for two hours without being able to find the problem. It's going to be necessary for him to get behind the wall in the basement to troubleshoot further which means unloading everything stored down there. We've decided the trickle will have to do for the rest of the trip because unloading the basement right now is not an option. At least the water pressure in the bathroom is normal so showers don't have to be taken at the campground's bath house.
Tomorrow we'll see Bemidji, the laundromat and the oil change business.
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