Tuesday, July 5, Pine River to Crow Wing State Park, MN

After leaving our campsite we stopped in town at a small cafe for breakfast and had some good pancakes and oatmeal and french toast.  Then back to the Paul Bunyan trail.  Today we saw bicyclists, walkers, joggers and a few electric bicycle users; many more trail users than yesterday.  The area we went through is full of lakes with many cabins and houses on them and the small towns often had a row of restaurants and shops catering to the tourist/vacationer trade.  We stopped in one town's city park and it had an ice rink area that for the summer had a couple of pickleball courts on it. We chatted with someone there about recumbents, he's had a short wheelbase one and recently got a better model, also short wheelbase.  When by a marshy area, looked down and saw 2 trumpeter swans with 4 cygnets. The parents kept a watchful eye on us, while the young ones unconcernably stuck their heads under the water and fed on the vegetation.

 In Brainerd, we detoured off the route to cross the Mississippi River and head into the downtown area to get something to eat.  

Stopped at a co-op store and got some good sandwiches and soup.  Then crossed back over the Mississippi by another bridge and got back on the route, which eventually took us for 5 miles or so on a winding route through the woods of Crow Wing State Park, paralleling the Mississippi with occasional views of it.  This is where we are camping for the night. After setting up camp, we took a walk right from the campground along the river to where there is a ghost town that was a significant, important town in the 1800's, with a trail that ran to the Red River valley, mainly for trade. We saw the place where the trail forded the river. We would have walked farther to where there was a battle in 1768 between the Ojibwe and the Dakota, but we were sick of the mosquitoes.  This is the first place that we felt compelled to use bug spray and still they were pestering us. 

Didn't see any more lady slippers today, but started seeing bright orange butterfly milkweed and an orange lily-shaped flower.