Somehow while living in Minnesota we never made it to the headwaters of the Mississippi. Today we finally remedied that. Itasca is a “massive” park (but really it is) on a beautiful lake whose outflow makes it all the way to the gulf of mexico. And they don’t open their camp grounds until noon, so we hiked the Dr. Roberts trail until we could set up camp.
What a nice camp it was too, with a view through trees of the sparkly lake. We knitted and wrote and snoozed while the campsites around us began to fill as a trickle of weekenders joined us. They were all really nice and only the college boys were loud, and even they knocked it off at quiet hours. Minnesota nice I guess.
It was a total of 8 miles of hiking today, on paved trails and boardwalks mostly. And what a boardwalk we had leading out of the campground, too! In addition to the river, Itasca is also the terminus (or rather, the opposite of that, sorry I don’t know latin) of the Mississippi River Trail, a bicycle route that goes a long way. Maybe Iowa? Rosie told me but I was driving. So the boardwalks were bike friendly (although not texturized so probably not great in the wet). My favorite detail of this boardwalk, not memorialized in photos I’m afraid, is that many of the planks were bookmatched, like the soundboard of a guitar.
And then of course, there’s the headwaters. Lake Itasca is a big one but its outflow is not — I would certainly call it a creek if anybody asked. I have to imagine that the first people here probably came from the other direction, following the river as far as they could. They found the lake, and named that instead.
So we walked across the river, or over it, or just jumped in. It was clear and cold and running and a more moving experience than I had expected. I filmed a loop of the water running over the rocks while Rosie and Georgia played in it. Then I posed for the obligatory log bridge shot.
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