The Mighty Mississippi

Well, we were off again yesterday morning on another road trip.  Eventually we made our way to Bemidji, MN, to find Paul Bunyan and Babe. 

73 Tamarac NWR, 201312

And find them we did at a nice park downtown along the lake shore.  We also encountered Chief Bemidji and a marvelous metal sculpture dedicated to all pow-wow dancers.  Jack got up close and personal with Babe, and found a bird’s nest in her nostril!  Did you know that these statues are thought to be the second most photographed icons in the nation, behind only Mount Rushmore?

73 Tamarac NWR, 201313

Then it was on to Itasca State Park.  Itasca was the first of all the Minnesota State Parks, and is famously known as being the headwaters of the mighty Mississippi River.  Because of all the recent rains and the spring thaw, we were not able to straddle the headwaters that emerge from Lake Itasca, but what a difference from crossing the Mississippi down in, say, Baton Rouge.  I tried to get Jack to hop the rocks into the middle of the headwaters, but he just wouldn’t do it! Baring teeth smile  I was looking for a good action shot.  He sure can be stubborn at times.

IMG_8814

Today was a much more relaxing day as we stayed on the refuge and decided to drown a few worms in Lost Lake.  I’ve always enjoyed fishing, and it has been way too long since I’ve taken time to do it.  The weather forecast was not good, but it turned out to be a simply gorgeous six hours spent enjoying the solitude by having the whole lake to ourselves.  With it being Memorial Day Weekend, I was happily shocked that no one else came to take advantage of this beautiful place.  The birds were singing, the sun was shining, and the fish were biting!

_MG_8815

Here’s Jack’s monster catch of the day.  I’m surprised he can hold it with one hand! Rolling on the floor laughing Ha Ha!  He was mostly using artificial lures, while I just stuck to the worms.  (I do have to admit that I didn’t take a picture of the Northern Pike that he caught and released to grow up some more.)

_MG_8818

And here is what I ended up with using my lowly worms.  Enough perch and one biggie sunfish to provide me with about three meals.  What a fun time I had, and it was such a treat to have someone help me with tangled lines and behead and gut the fish!  You rock, Jack!  Guess I better quit for now and get busy trying to filet those fish…

_MG_8792

                                                                                THE END!

Thanks for stopping by… talk to you later,  Judy

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Noble Wedding at Andernach

Image
The Wedding of Princess Anna of Hohenzollern and Roman Goldschmith took place on 01.06.2013 at the maria Himmelfahrts Church at Andernach. Princess anna is a daughter of the late Prince Godehart of Hohenzollern and his wife Heide. Her great-grandfahter Prince Karl Anton of Hohenzollern bought in 1908 Namedy Castle in Andernach-Namedy which is still in Family posession. Therefore this is the seat of this branch of the Family. The Wedding on the Wedding Day was very cool and windy but luckily only very light rain.  The groom Roman Goldschmidt (left) with his witness   the brides's mother Princess Heide of Hohenzollern The bride's brother Prince Carlos of Hohenzollern  
Read more

A day of rest

Nothing exciting to report for today.  I decided not to do much of anything or go anywhere.  Due to the chillier temperatures from that cold front that moved through, I’ll be giving my fingers a bag balm treatment tonight since they’ve begun to crack again. When I got here, I didn’t set up the DISH, but just relied on the antenna for TV reception.  As I stood on the stool to crank it up, the crank fell out on the floor.  This happened last year, but my friend Denny was able to fix it for me.  Well, Denny isn’t around this year so I was stymied as to what to do.  I really didn’t want to climb up on the roof to see if it was sticking up at all, so I stood on the picnic table across the street and sure enough, it was up off of the roof.  Can you see the non-mechanical gears turning in my head?  I finally thought to get back on the stool with a pair of pliers and began turning the post that was sticking out of the ceiling.  I felt absolutely br...
Read more

It’s safe to park next to me now :)

Image
I was hoping to post pictures of how I do the salinity testing on the refuge tonight, but there was a fly in the ointment with that plan.  I’ll have to do that next week.  I picked up fellow volunteer, Jim, to take him along with me since I would be doing a back road that hadn’t had much use since hurricane Ike hit.  It turned out that the only pictures I could take were from the safety of the refuge vehicle.  We’ve got several white-tailed kites on the refuge right now. We did one test on the back road, but were accosted by thousands of mosquitoes.  I was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, and had to put the hood up and pull the strings to only leave a small area open on my face.  My only other exposed skin was my hands.  After that one trip out of the suburban, we decided to forget about the rest of the tests.  I’ve never seen the mosquitoes that bad.  Sitting in the car, the windows were covered with them!  We itched our way down th...
Read more