July 4, Bemidji to Pine River

Our warm showers hosts fed us steel cut oats with homemade maple syrup for breakfast which tasted very good.  We started moving around eight and headed to the Paul Bunyan trail, a paved rail trail that extends for miles and miles.  So on it we had just slight ups and downs except for a little bit of hills around Walker. A lot of the day was running through jack pines, white birch and poplar trees and also by bogs, swamps and lakes. We saw all kinds of flowers along the trail, especially in the more open areas, birdsfoot trefoil, some kind of purple bellflower, red columbines, various daisy-like flowers in white and yellow, red clover and others, many we didn't know. Only saw a couple clumps of lady slippers, though. We saw a deer and fawn cross the trail a ways ahead of us. Notable birds were a pileated woodpecker and a ruffed grouse.  After starting on the trail, we were surprised to see no trail users for a number of miles, especially on a holiday, maybe everyone was sleeping in.  Later on we started to see a few. The only time we had "4th of July traffic" and challenge was the town of Walker; it didn't help we were there about the time their parade was going to start. 
We're camping in the Pine River city park and it's near a small dam that has rows of rocks for the water to run down between them. 

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