Day 12: Bemidji MN

Having time on my hands I decided to backtrack twenty-odd miles along US-2 and check out the bit of the Great River Road between Cass Lake and downtown Bemidji.  Which was singularly devoid of river views, swooping vistas or decent bridges, but did sport some æxcellent joke comedy road names to match the "Squirrel Keepers Road" I spotted yesterday.  These include:

• Fishy Waters Drive, and
• Plum Nuts Road, and
• Nearlya Road

Later I passed the end of Yaubetcha Lane.  So, downtown Bemidji.  It's dominated by the lake, which has the Mississippi at both ends.

Under the bridge lurk trolls, with an interesting way of luring victims:

although it seems that they do in fact supply the socks before eating you.  Natch Paul Bunyan gets a look-in too:

He appears to have shaved off his beard since yesterday

Then another thirty-odd miles south to Itasca State Park, where Lake Itasca is generally held to be the source of the Mississippi even though there appear to be nine or a dozen streams, creeks and beck'oles feeding it.  "Itasca" is not a Native American name^[1], no, it's a cod-Latin neologism coined by one Henry Schoolcraft, from "veritas caput", which doesn't quite mean "true head [of the Mississippi]".  With it being a holiday weekend the place was pretty full when I arrived, mostly families and dogs taking advantage of the suddenly sunny and warm weather to splash about in the river.

Wade in the water,
Wade in the water, children...

George the dogg of retriever breed being a shameless tart

George the dogg of retriever breed doing what doggs
of retriever breed do i.e. titting about in water

I went for a paddle too

Beyond the Visitor Center is a ten-mile one-way road through the woods, which they refer to as "Wilderness Road".

which obviously had to be Defiled with Rock'n'Roll:

and leads to, among other places, the Alton Heights fire lookout tower:

Not entirely my cup of tea, so I didn't go up it but instead came back to Bemidji to catch some rays outside the hotel before the weather in the shape of a GBFO thunderstorm, appeared.

Thus concludes the Odyssey of the Mighty Mississippi, for tomorrow I start heading generally west.  Halts planned from Bismarck ND, Billings MT and Pocatello ID, the latter because the hoteliers of Idaho Falls seem to have turned in robdogs post-COVID and can therefore Get Stuffed.

1. The Ojibwe call it Omashkoozo-zaaga'igan (Elk Lake) while the French referred to it as Lac Labiche (Doe Lake)