58readytotravel

Thursday August 9 2007
This morning we drove south to a little town called Pelican Rapids. We were delighted to find a very clean and friendly town filled with statues of pelicans, a nice park and an antique store to browse. Mark found a waffle iron that was used over a campfire or gas stove for $19 at the antique store. I took some photos of the park, flowers, suspension bridge, world's largest pelican, a windmill by the dam and several of the pelicans that were displayed in front of the stores in town.

Again we were fortunate that a fellow agreed to take our photo in front of the world's largest pelican!

Here's some of the store front pelicans.....

It was a fun day walking through Pelican Rapids. We headed back up to camp using a different route and came across another antique store. Again Mark found something. A Stroh beer stein for $17. Before heading back to the Creek, we stopped to fill up with diesel in Detroit Lakes, MN for $3.04 a gallon.

Betty, our cat, decided that she wanted to see what was outside of the trailer that afternoon. Luckily I noticed the door open and we ran out and got her back into the trailer. She isn't used to being outside, so once she gets out there she has no idea what to do or where to go. At 4 pm it was 88*, sunny and clear.

------------------------------------

Friday August 10 2007

We left from Detroit Lakes, MN and headed to Duluth, MN at 7:30 am. It was a hazy 69* and sunny out when we left. We headed east on highway 34 passing many corn and bean fields. Then the scenery turned to pretty much just trees on each side of the road without much else to see. Here and there we would see some very small fields of those large rolls of hay. We got stuck in a different type of traffic jam. There was this HUGE thing in front of us and we were not sure just what it was. The officer had the road shut down just about 6 cars ahead of us. He walked back to tell each vehicle that there was a rookie driver of this "stuck" truck and he was having a hard time making the turn. It turned out that on this truck was one really long blade for one of those new type windmill. The officer told us that they are made in Grand Rapids, MN, just north of where we were in Remer, MN. After almost a half hour delay, we were on our way again. I tried to take a photo of this massive thing, but only managed a shot from the back. You can't see how long it was.

The Mississippi River head waters were just north of our drive. We passed over the mightly Mississippi River on road 200 at the town of Jacobson, MN. Doesn't look so mighty here, but still it was a river that was building in size along its path down the United States to finally dump into the Gulf of Mexico.

Here's a shot of Duluth, MN from a rest area along I-35.

What a time we had getting into this Duluth city park, Indian Point. Our GPS decided to take us in circles. This wasn't the first time that it had taken us on such a "fun" trip. It was even more "delightful" with the Creek in tow! We must have went on and off of the expressway three times before we were finally able to get our bearings. We won't mention all of the idle chatter going on between Mark and I in the truck! The directions given by the Trailer Life book were not much better. I don't know why they use right and left at times and then mix in a East and West. Guess that they like to keep you guessing. I'm just glad that our Ford F350 gives the directions on the overhead screen or else we would never know in what direction we were facing.

So here we are finally in the park after much twisting and turning to get backed into this spot. It wasn't even long enough to park our truck off of the grass. I doubt that we will ever camp at this park again. Just too hard to get to and then too hard and tight to get into the spots. We are both glad that the day is coming to an end.