30² ft Adventure 006

I have been journaling for years and more recently using a digital journal. Rather than retyping the text  into the blog, I just copied and pasted my raw thoughts from my bullet journal about the trip to the source of the Mississippi; Lake Itasca. To begin I was traveling from the Indian Dunes National Park.

5/12/20222

So F'ing Hot 🥵

• Up at 5 trip to the bathroom. Back in the truck and slept for another hour.
• Breakfast was a granola bar, applesauce and coffee.
• Dumped my grey water and took down and stored my privacy tent.
• Stowed everything away and was underway by 9. It was already 85 degrees.
• Stopped at noon at a Loves truck stop. Made a peanut butter sandwich and pressed on to the Cedar River Campground in Tipton, Iowa
• Crossed the Mississippi for the first time in my life.
• Passed by lots and lots of large farms. Some even had large wind turbines on them.
• Got to the campground at 1:30 and called the owner who wasn’t at the registration office
• She told me to go to my site, B2, and she would find me and register me later.
• Right next to the interstate.
  
• Took the opportunity because of the heat and the aspect of my site, to set up my idea of an awning.
• Should have done that once in the backyard at the island. Instead I had to put it all together in the heat and 30 mph winds. But figured it out. Good thing be cause it is keeping the setting sun off me.
• Had it up a couple of hours. The wind was something fierce. The awning did its job until the sun passed behind a huge maple tree on my site, so I took it down.
• Had a pita and some hummus for a snack and a salad with some chicken salad in pouch on top. Didn’t feel like eating all that much.
• Seems like a pretty nice place, but it has seen better days. Recent reviews I had read weren’t very kind and in my opinion not deserved.
• Three huge rigs showed up after I got set up.
• Been sitting here reading until just before sunset. Time to brush teeth and turn in. Much cooler now and the breeze has dropped off a little.
• Lulled to sleep by the sounds of high speed cars and trucks on the interstate.
  
• Tomorrow I start my trip up the Mississippi to Lake Itasca on my way to Voyageur National Park

My pitiful awning

My Yard Light

Trying to keep cool with fan and bug net

5/13/2022

What a day

• Cooler by about 15 degrees when I woke up.
• Cleaned up with a little wipe bath. Gross I know but I wasn’t about to walk the two hundred yards to shower. I would just need another by the time I got back to the truck.
• Breakfast was coffee and some oatmeal. While that was in the making, I started to organize a little getting ready for the next leg north to Perot State Park Campground in Wisconsin.
• Not much to break down so was on the road by 9 AM
• First stop Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa.
• Took about an hour and a half to get there. Over county roads through farmland just starting to be worked. Through so many towns whose name you only knew because the water tower had their name on it.
• What a great little place the field of dreams movie sit is. The suggested donation was $40 and with that I got a bumper sticker, to pins and a jar of infield dirt. Very cool. Only stayed a half hour or so and got a bat and a program from the gift shop.
• With all my swag I was on my way to the campground.
• Crossed the Mississippi into Wisconsin and had lunch at the information center which was locked because the attendant was at lunch. 🙄
• So I had my own lunch of PB & J at a picnic table there. My friend Jay called to catch up and we talked a little.
• I pressed on. North on Route 35 which runs along the Mississippi. Beautiful drive. Until… a road closure the sent me on a fifty mile detour. Google map’s didn’t know how to handle it. I was in this endless loop of the app trying to make me back-track to the closed road. I actually had to stop the car, take out the atlas to figure out where I was, reset maps and choose an alternate route I could live with. That believe it or not actually followed the detour signage.
• Added an hour on to the trip.
• Got to the Perot State Park Campground in Wisconsin and checked in.
• Their well samples showed that the park's potable water supply had high nitrate levels. So will have to use what I have in my tank sparingly and fill up at the next campground tomorrow.
• Set up my privacy tent and set up for the night in about 15 minutes and have been sitting in my new $7 camp chair that I got at a Walmart on my way out of Tipton this morning. Brilliant invention.
• Dinner will be scrambled hamburger on a couple of pitas and a small salad.

If you build it.......

The field and farm house

Had to buy some swag!

Perot State Park Campground, WI

5/14/2022

Long day… short uneventful drive

• Woke up at 3. The temperature had dropped. It was in the 50’s. That’s more like it but it felt cold because I was still clammy from the heat the day before.
• Rolled over until 5ish. Had to visit the restroom. But if I was going all that way I was going to take advantage of the shower.
• Packed for the hike to the head. Washed two days of 90 degree sweat and grime off in a very cold shower.
• Put on a fresh set of clothes unsure whether or not I should throw out the old ones or add them to the laundry bag. Chose the latter.
• Climbed back into the truck and fell back to sleep until about 6 when I got a call from sister dear checking up on me. She was out for an early morning walk. Jeff had a baseball game that she would be attending.
• It was a good talk. Nice to hear a familiar voice.
  
• I told her of my woes over being undecided about traveling on beyond what I had planned and made reservations for.
• Mostly that I would figure things out when I could get off the road for a few days at Sally’s cousin’s farm in western Iowa.
• Breakfast was coffee, water and oatmeal.
• I mulled my earlier call with sister dear. I had purposely only made an itinerary for a month telling myself I would go further if I was feeling it. But was I feeling it?
• Maybe I could go on. I was kind of getting into a rhythm. A shit ton of work to see such a few notable places that I have seen thus far.
• Gonna have to mull some more.
• I broke camp and was on the road to my next campground in Wild River State Park in Center City, MN by about 9AM.
• I always feel ashamed of myself for punching the destination into Google Maps after having been a surveyor in a past life. It is pure blind faith I put in the technology to get me where I am supposed to be going. The alternative is unthinkable because the atlas I have is so poor. Also, I have just become plain lazy.
• A four hour drive through Wisconsin farm country- through towns named Blair, Whitehall, Osseo, Eau Clair, Altoona, Chippewa Falls, and Turtle Lake.
• Passed a farm with a sobering sign painted on the side of a barn “Save America Arm Yourselves” under which was a Trump Pence poster 🙄
• I crossed the St. Croix River into Minnesota and a place called Taylor Falls and was 15 miles from the campground.
• Another nice place to stay. And in about 10-15 minutes I was all set up for the evening and it was only 2 PM.
• Spent the afternoon hi lighting my route I had taken, in my atlas. Total to date 2,278 miles
• Someone stopped at the edge of my site while riding by with his small children and asked about my solar panels. Very interested in what they were for. He was in the residential solar business but didn’t know anything about equipment available for cars and campers. We talked until he realized that in that short time his kids had ridden off down the camp road without him.
• Cooler as I go north. 60 degrees right now.
• Been reading “Blue Highways”, the only real book I have with me. I have lost my kindle in the back of the truck somewhere with a bunch of books I downloaded for the trip. Like a few other things I had set aside in places so I would be sure to know where to find them. Now among the missing.
• Tomorrow Lake Itasca.

Wild River Campground, Center City, MN

Solar Panels at work charging my power station

 

5/15/2022

Early Riser

• Awakened at 3 and rolled over and back to sleep at 5. Woke up after a bit of dream. Dreamed that I was lost trying to camp in NYC. Was sitting on the roof of my truck trying to think of the place I wanted to go to plug into Google maps but couldn’t remember anything.
• Natures urge got me out of the truck early to hike to the bathroom.
• Gonna head back and try to sleep for another hour.
• Beautiful and cool temps before sunrise. I think I am the only one up in the campground.
• “The wanderer’s danger is to find comfort… Memory is each man’s own last measure, and for some, the only achievement.” Blue Highways
• These quotes stand out as I read them to give my upcoming stay with family perspective and wondering if I should continue west.
• At about 8 AM folks started to awaken in the campground. For many it’s Sunday and the last day of a weekend camping trip.
• I have no use for weekends anymore. Weekend days are only recognizable to me from day label on my weekly pill dispenser.
• It was a long drive to Itasca State park. 4.5 hours.
• Gas stations were far and few between. But the good news was that both times I stopped gas was only$3.99/gallon.
• Got a crispy chicken sandwich at McDonald’s and did a little grocery shopping in a County Market grocery Store as well.
• Got to the campground an hour early so even though they said no one had the site last night, there was a tow behind in my spot so I have to wait till 4 PM until they vacate.
• So parked in an overflow parking lot and hiked to see Lake Itasca, headwaters of the Mississippi.
• It is so beautiful. Must be 35 mph winds and the lady at the registration desk said it would get down to 38 degrees tonight.
• On my walk back to the truck a older couple in a van with Oregon plates pulled up along side me and asked where I was from. I said Maine and said that must be why you have shorts on. I laughed. The remarked that it was going down to 38 degrees tonight and that they were cold. I said must be that global warming I've been hearing about. They laughed and drove on.
  
• Had a salad for dinner last night with the pulled rotisserie chicken I had gotten at the County Market on the way to the campsite.
• As I was eating, a chipmunk poked it’s head out of the rear passenger wheel well and stared at me. And all of a sudden I got anxious about what if it nests in the engine and the trucl conks out in the middle of nowhere.
• So I spent 15 minutes trying to chase it away from the truck when ever I saw it.
• Must have looked like an idiot to the few nearby campers.
• This is what the solitude has done to me. Turned me into an anxious knuckle head.
• The only way I could get passed it was by meditating using my meta mantra for someone I have a conflict with: “May you be safe, be happy, be healthy, live with ease.” After the chipmunk is a being.
• He never returned and I read a book while not thinking about him again.
• At 8 PM I packed it in, got changed and watched a movie “Charlie Wilson’s War”
• Fell asleeppromptly.
• It was toasty warm in the camper.

Locally owned vs National chain

Lake Itasca

Another view of the lake

 

5/16/2022

Gone Primitive….And Way Off The Grid

• I was up at 5 and rolled over and back to sleep until 6 with the help of some meditation.
• It was too early to leave yet, so was wondering what to do until I left. The sun was only thinking about coming up and it was cold. 48 but it felt much colder given the 90s from earlier in the week.
• Got myself dressed and headed out on an early morning hike in search of the source of the Mississippi.
• The outlet to lake Itasca was about 1.5 miles away by a paved trail starting in the campground.
• Beautiful morning for a hike and I was the only one doing it.
• When I got there I was astonished that it was only about 20 ft across. There was an explanatory monument and a log bridge you could use to walk across. Foot worn and smooth by countless others that wanted to say they stepped across the Mississippi.
• Grabbed a few pictures and headed back to to the truck.
• Decided to take a shower because there would be no other facilities for the next 4 days.
• Cold as all get out. But felt good to be clean again.
• Had a quick breakfast and was on the road to Lake Janette campground in the superior forest and Voyageur National Park by 9.

The info.

I stepped across the Mississippi