Sunday, August 17, 2025 Itasca State Park: The headwaters of the Mississippi

 

Sunday, August 17, 2025  Itasca State Park

I really like it here.  I get to roam and eat grass.  I saw something run up a tree and tried to chase it and pulled right off my leash!  Ha ha!  But whatever it was got away.  Darned leash…

We slept with a lot of the windows open to enjoy the breeze.  It was cold when I woke up, and I had to close some of the windows.  It is windy.  I had to put on an extra set of sleeves when we did our walk. It was a beautiful sunrise.  We walked along the rural road passing a lake.  Cattails grow up to the highway and are swaying in the wind.  There are lots of trees such as pines and aspens.  Only one car passes us.  It is the epitome of pastoral and quite pretty… and quite windy and cool!

When I got back to Artie, I got out of my shorts and into capris.  Hopefully, that will be enough.  I kept the flannel shirt on too. The skies are threatening, and they are calling for rain later in the day.

We readied Artie for her ride to Itasca State Park.  This is where the headwaters of the Mississippi River are.  The scenery is green, lots of trees and so many lakes, creeks and ponds.  We turn up hwy. 71 and more of the same.  We entered the park at the South entrance.  The visitor center said we could have our spot early if it is vacant.  It wasn’t vacant, so we went to the visitor center where the headwaters are.  It is heavily forested, and we crossed over the teensy Mississippi on our way.  It may have been 10 feet wide, if that.

We follow the trail a few hundred feet, and there it is:  Lake Itasca.  And the row of boulders marks where the lake ends, and the river begins.  It is easy crossing the boulders.  They also have some steps you can go down and make the itty bitty crossing.  The water is not cold.  They say when a drop of rain falls on Itasca, it will take 90 days to get to the gulf of Mexico.  Or is it the Gulf of America… The river actually heads north out of Itasca and turns south in about 50 miles or so.  It is quite amazing to see this river in its infancy, knowing the life it brings to our country.

Let’s see if our site is empty.  IT IS!  Yay!  Hmmm…  the site is big enough, but what they don’t tell you on the web site is how level it is.  Yikes, this will be interesting.  Spouse works Artie back and forth.  Not only is she unlevel left to right, back to front is way off too.  It will be hard to disconnect.  Spouse wanted to get as far back as possible since that looked the most level.  Using our new leveling blocks, we got the left to right thing darn close to level.  Spouse was finally able to disconnect.  We have no idea if we will be able to get the truck in the position to connect… but we will worry about that later!

We were so focused on positioning in relation to the electrical box, that we didn’t notice a tree that will not allow us to fully open our slider.  TOO LATE!  We are not hooking up again!  We will just have to live with it about 8 inches short.  And you know… a vodka tonic tastes just as good even when the slider isn’t totally opened!

The skies are threatening so we didn’t want to do too much, but we did tour the park.   We found the Aiton Heights Fire Tower.  It’s about ½ mile hike up the road.  Think about this… it is threatening thunderstorms any minute…  and we are about to climb a 100+ foot metal tower… a tower that dwarfs the tree canopy…   15 flights of 9 steep stairs gets you to the top…  Some incredibile views but, please lightening storm… don’t start now!

There is a great bike trail we will take once the rain passes.  It is about a 17 mile loop.  Part of the trail shares the road with cars, but it is a one way road at 20 mph.  We scouted it out and it looks safe.  Guess we will find out.

The temperature stayed in the 60’s all day.