Day 2 of our 21st Anniversary Vacation

Got the GPS thing figured out - as long as it's in "Nav" mode, and not "Map" mode, it'll stay on.

Which is good, because we did a lot of backwoods driving today.  Towns that were just blips on a map, and some, not even that!

We did stop at a dam on the Mississippi river, and a few other places, like Cass Lake, before we made it to the actual headwaters of the river, or as close as you can get without a canoe or kayak.

It was a good thing it wasn't rainy yet, because the road to get here was just sand, not really even a road.  There was a family camped here, and another couple had just loaded their kayaks.  They had a goal to kayak on every part of the Mississippi they could.

We then drove to the official headwaters of the Mississippi.  So, so far, it took about 4 hours to get to the actual headwaters, and another 1.5 hours t get to the official one in Itasca State Park.  We walked through the visitor center, then drove on up to the headwaters, where there were quite a few people and little kids.  We watched a couple of kids cross the river on slippery stones.  Not for us older people!  We did get eaten up by mosquitoes the size of my thumb, though.

After that, it was time to come back to home base.  A long day of driving, ended by driving back in rain and fog, on roads where the markings were impossible to see.  Really stressful.  Going to cap the day with a cup of chicken wild rice soup at the casino, and maybe a little gambling.

Day 1 of our 21st Anniversary Vacation

I'm not really counting Friday, because all we did after I got home from Denver was do some laundry, re-pack and come up to the casino.  We checked in, played a little, and came back to the room.

Today, however - we did a lot of driving.  We drove from Hinkley, MN to Danbury, WI where I got some gas, trying to dodge all the ATV people.  The place was a zoo!

After that, we drove to Hayward, WI where we stopped at the Wal-mart, and I picked up a clip so I could use the phone as a GPS guide.  It took a while to figure out how to setup the phone, but I eventually got it to work.  Except, the screen shut off is limited to 10 minutes, so every 10 minutes I have to touch the screen or I lose the GPS map.  We took a turn at Drummond, WI and drove a county road, where we passed a lot of lakes.  We stopped at the Delta Diner, which was the whole point of this meandering trip (besides the sightseeing).

After lunch, we headed to Duluth, MN, but got on a little detour looking for a historical marker, and ended up at Wisconsin Point, WI.  We got to see Lake Superior from the Wisconsin side at least.

After that little side trip, we headed to the Canal Park in Duluth, and took a little walk on the boardwalk and Tulana did a little shopping.  Then it was dinner time.

We drove down to Superior, and stopped by a candy store, Sweeden Sweets.  They had fudge, and popcorn and sweets and taffy and... a lot of things bad for us. :)  We went there first because they would have closed before we had dinner.  We went to dinner at Shorty's Pizza and Smoked Meats.  I had the smoked meat soup, and it was awesome.  We also had the Thanksgiving Turkey Balls as an appetizer - mashed potatoes, stuffing, and turkey, all rolled into a meatball sized ball, and deep fried, and served with a cranberry dipping sauce.  It was pretty good too!

After dinner, we drove back to the hotel.  By this time, we were tuckered out, so she took a bath, I updated my blog, and started researching for tomorrow's trip.  I'm hoping we can find the headwaters of the Mississippi without too much trouble! 

New steps

Well, we did get those delivered and installed on Friday.  I'll share some pictures.  We also went to the movies every day this weekend.  We'll probably do that again in a couple weeks, because there's a lot of movies coming out we want to see.

Did stay home from work partly today, and worked from home in the afternoon.  Had a rough night last night.  Hopefully, I won't have a repeat.