Out of Our Rut Blog Welcome Page

Welcome to the Out of Our Rut blog landing page.

Who we are:

We are a couple of former engineers that lived and worked in the Rochester New York area for over 30 years. When we were laid off from two different companies, one day apart, we took that as a sign to change things up. We had built a beautiful home on 50 acres and loved the place, but with plenty of time on our hands, we began to travel more and realized that when we were on the road for weeks on end, we didn't really miss all the “stuff” we had back home. Plus the work involved with maintaining our home and property seemed to be the only reason we would head back home. That prompted us to get out of our rut and sell 95% of our possessions and our home and move into our 38 foot motorhome and travel the country full time starting in June of 2016.

Chris and Jack Hiking in Washington State

At Pullout Along Rugged Oregon Coast

Our mission:

To explore the country with a strong bias towards outdoor activities. Our passions are hiking and geocaching with some mountain biking on the side. I am an avid photographer. I guess working at Eastman Kodak for 32 years had an influence in that. And while we live in a motorhome and stay in many campgrounds, we really are not campers. We seldom have campfires and don't have a corn hole game. We rarely stay at a campground for its amenities. We pick a place that is near where we want to explore. We think of it more like our home happens to have wheels and can move around. Our desire in these travels is to slow the pace. We didn't want to see if we could get to all the National Parks as quickly as possible. We like to keep a travel day to less than 200 miles and if the place warrants, stay for a week or more.

At Geocaching Headquarters in Seattle for #10,000

The blog:

For friends and family (as well as us) to keep track of what we have been up to, we have created this blog. It chronicles where we've been and what we've done as we wander around the country. Each stop along the way will, at minimum, get mentioned in the blog. Some longer stops in areas we enjoyed may get multiple blog posts in order to give that stop it's due. Generally the blog has lots of photographs as I find it difficult to eliminate photos I like. The blog will talk about the campground to some extent, but it shouldn't be considered a campground review. We seldom seem to exhaust the things we want to explore before we exhaust ourselves and need to move on. That means we may completely skip some activities or places in an area that others may consider essential. We look at that as a reason to come back in the future.

Pretty Sunset in Quartzite Arizona

At the Window in Big Bend National Park

This landing page:

The problem with just about any blog is that fact it is chronological. This is fine since that is how the events occurred in real life. But since our blog is so much about a given location, it can be difficult for somebody to find a specific blog post for a given location. I even find it a challenge to remember when we happened to be at a given location if I wanted to look something up. For instance, if someone asked about Twin Falls Idaho. I know we stayed there but it might take me awhile to figure out that we were there in June of 2017 to get them to the right post. If I could only look at a map of all the places we have stayed and have an easy way to get to the relevant blog post.

Since I already use Google My Maps to keep track of our locations, I have created a special map that has all of our stops since going full time. None of the routes are included in the map since that just seems to clutter it up and don't really add value. By clicking the link below the map, an interactive map with all of our stops will open in another window. It is then possible to move around the map and zoom in an area of interest. Clicking on any pin on the map will pop up the name of the location along with a link to the blog post(s) associated with that stop. Since I am nearly always 2 to 4 weeks behind in the blog, some of the most recent map points may not have a link to a blog, but they will in time. The GREEN pins are locations that happen to include one of our annual or yearly reviews.

So if you want to see what we found to explore in a given area, this should provide a much easier way to find the blog post.

Click HERE to open interactive Google map

2025 Year End Review

With 2025 coming to an end, we are celebrating nine and a half years of living on the road full time in our 38 foot motorhome. We began and finished the year at our RV lot in Titusville Florida at The Great Outdoors (TGO). We purchased the lot almost 2 years ago. It’s a fairly basic lot with a nice flat concrete driveway and the standard full hook up utilities but it does have a 10 foot by 12 foot shed which is very convenient for working on projects over the months we will be stationary here. The resort has a lot of nice amenities but we don’t take advantage of most of them. I must admit that I do miss the occasional winter spent out in southern California and Arizona where the hiking and views are a lot nicer.

We started out 2025 wrapping up some of our doctors appointments in an attempt to get our old bodies in shape for another six months of travel. Our plans for the year were to explore some of the upper Midwest. As we looked into what we wanted to see and do in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, we picked out a few events that were both location and date specific. These types of stops have a much firmer window that form the rough outline and timing of our journey.

The first event was to take part in a Habitat for Humanity build in Marquette Michigan in the Upper Peninsula. The two week window for the RV-Care-A-Vanner program was from mid to late June. The second planned event was to attend the Oshkosh Air Show in Wisconsin. This weeklong show runs in late July. With those two points on our map we have quite a bit of distance and time to fill in before, between and after these events.

It is definitely a time consuming task to map out a route, plan our camping stops and figure out how long we want to stay in areas along the way. We spent a few weeks over last winter researching things to see and do in various cities along the route. Where is the good hiking or points of interest?  I use a Google Map and a website called Furkot to piece together a plan. As we get a better handle on our route and timing, we can start to make reservations at various campgrounds and by the end of April we had a 70% of the nights reserved out through Labor Day. We have found that after then, we can be much more serendipitous about our planning for the route back to Florida.

Below is a map of our route for the year. By starting and returning to the same place, the map is a bit confusing. I have a link below the map that will open the actual Google Map which allows others to zoom and pan around to get a better view of the route. Clicking on any of the pins for a travel stop will pop up a window with the name of the stop as well as the blog post related to that stop.

Click HERE to open the Google Map

We left Titusville in late April with just over 7 weeks to make our way to Marquette. While getting the rig serviced in South Carolina, we needed to make a quick drive up to Ohio for a death in the family. It was nice to see so many relatives and friends even if it was at a sad time. We continued our journey with 2 weeks in a few state parks in the southern Appalachians.  In Cincinnati, we got a chance to get together with family and have some Skyline Chili and Graeters Ice Cream. We managed to sneak in a stop at a National Park and get our motorhome windshield replaced in northern Indiana. Then we worked our way up north through Michigan stopping at a few Elks Lodges before crossing over the Mackinac Bridge into the Upper Peninsula. The time spent working with the Habitat for Humanity affiliate in Marquette was quite rewarding and we learned a few construction tricks.

We had about 3 weeks before the Oshkosh Air Show and we got to explore the western side of the UP at a few different campgrounds before working our way south into Wisconsin. We really enjoyed the air show and you’ll read more about that later in this post. Then we continued west into Minnesota where we spent the next 37 nights at various county and state parks. I was able to talk my wife into a side trip into eastern North Dakota to experience what others have called the Disneyland of geocaching - more on that later as well.

It was about this time that we “called an audible”. We had previously planned to head back to Marquette and help out again on the Habitat build and see how it had progressed since our stop in June. But after we had talked with some fellow campers while in Minnesota, we decided to return to Minnesota to check out the north shore area along Lake Superior. This gave us the opportunity to even meet up with my nephew and his wife from Cincinnati while they were in town for her high school reunion. By then it was late September and we figured we better start making our way south to avoid the cold and snow that is inevitable for this area.

We stopped in the Apostle Islands in northern Wisconsin for several days where we got a chance to explore some of the unique landscape along the shoreline. As we headed south, we got to experience a cranberry harvest up close and personal and visit Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin both in Wisconsin. We continued through parts of Iowa, Illinois and Indiana with Chris making a return to her college town of Peoria after 40 years!

Coming through Tennessee, we got to spend a week back in the mountains to see the fall colors before timing our drive through Atlanta on a Sunday morning to minimize the traffic. A few days in a state park in Georgia and a couple of overnight stops at Elks Lodges and we made it back to Florida. It felt good when we returned to TGO after being gone for 190 nights. Things have definitely slowed down over the last two months as we get back to doing some work on the motorhome, our lot and getting in doctors appointments.

Here are a few more maps to help show where we spent our time. These “heat maps” are shaded to reflect the number of nights spent in each state - dark red is more nights, pale red is fewer nights. The first one is just for 2025. We camped in 13 different states this year with Florida, Minnesota and Michigan coming in the top 3 spots. The second map is similar but includes all 9.5 years we’ve been fulltime. The final map is the full 9.5 years but divided down to the county level to get a better understanding of where we were in each state.

Our 2025 Camping Map

Our 9.5 Year Camping Map

9.5 Years at County Level

Lots of people ask “how much does this lifestyle cost?”  Well the table below should help answer that. It doesn’t include items that would be spent if we were living in a sticks and bricks home like groceries, dining out, health care, clothing. But it does include camping costs as well as fuel for both the motorhome and the car as well as the miles driven. We did put on more miles on the rig this year but not significantly more.  Nothing else was all that surprising. Since the actual table has so many years now, I only include the past six years.  One other aspect is that the cost per night here at TGO is initially an educated estimate but I won’t have our last rental income check for the year until mid February at which point I will update the spreadsheet and this table.

Just the Stats for the Past 6 Years

The table does breakdown the type of places we have camped into four categories: boondocking, state parks, private campgrounds and Elks Lodges. While we tend to like state, county or city parks over private campgrounds, location is our most important consideration when picking a campground as well as availability and do we fit in the site. This year we did bump up our state park number a little bit compared the past couple of years. Our overall cost per night worked out to be just over $32 - a bit higher than many years but again not significantly higher.

Like we have done in past year end reviews, we have looked over the 49 stops from this year and tried to identify our favorites. After the votes were tallied, we came up with 8 clear winners. Don't look at this list as the best campgrounds we stayed at during the year. I will provide the name of the campground we stayed at but these winning stops are based purely on its location or what we found to see and do in the area. I will also warn readers that one place on the list might be a mediocre location if you’re not an avid geocacher but we found it to be quite entertaining.

For each winning stop, there is a short description of what we liked about it, a link to the first blog post for that location which will provide much more information about the stop and some of our favorite pictures from the stop. Since I am behind on my blog writing, there are some of the stops without the link to the post but this will be updated as they are written. In chronological order, here are the top 8 stops for 2025.

• Cloudland Canyon State Park, Trenton Georgia - We had done a day trip to this park back in 2021 and fell in love with the park and it’s wonderful hikes and views. We managed to get a spot for 5 nights and found it to be a rather roomy site. The final 8 miles into the parking lot is up a rather steep and curving road. It is doable in a rig our size but not necessarily fun. We repeated one of our favorite hikes the West Rim Loop. By staying in the park for multiple days, we were able to hike Sitton’s Gulch Trail which follows the base of the valley along a creek. This park is not too far from Chattanooga so we spent one day exploring some of the sights in that town including the Chattanooga Choo Choo. Cloudland Canyon is a nice relaxing place to visit in northern Georgia.

Cloudland Canyon Blog Post

Cloudland Canyon View

Large Overhanging Rock

• Union River Big Bear Campground, Silver City Michigan - Situated in the far western part of the Upper Peninsula, this private campground is pretty much surrounded by the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. We stayed here for a week after completing our Habitat build in Marquette. It is a remote location that didn’t have any cell coverage for our devices but there was reasonable WiFi that worked in our rig. There are many hiking trails within the park and we take advantage of many of them. The main feature of this area are the numerous waterfalls - more of them than can be seen in the time we were here. We had found a decent guide that rated the falls on beauty and ease of getting to the viewing location and we managed to hit a great number of the better ones. The only real problem with this stop was coming in early July - the bugs were pretty bad at times. If you can time your visit for the fall colors, I bet the views would be spectacular and the bugs would be less of an issue.

First Porcupine Mountains Blog Post

Lake of the Clouds

Beautiful Bond Falls

• Hancock Recreation Area Campground, Hancock Michigan - This stop isn’t all that far from the Porcupine Mountains but there is so much to see and do in this area that it would be a challenge to attempt both areas from one campground. Situated on the Keweenaw Peninsula that juts out into Lake Superior, this part of the UP was formerly a big copper mining area. Several of the old mines and facilities have been taken over by the National Park Service and offer a wide range of interesting tours. We did head up to Copper Harbor to explore an old lighthouse and fort. This area is known for some excellent mountain biking be we didn’t get a chance to try any bike trails and only got In minimal hiking since there were so many other things to see and do and we only had 5 nights in Hancock.

First Keweenaw Peninsula Blog Post

Shaft-Rock House at Quincy Mine

Eagle Harbor Light House

Incredible Stone Building in Calumet

• Camp Scholler Air Show, Oshkosh Wisconsin - Usually I don’t try to rank our tops picks for any given year, but this stop was so much fun that it was easily our favorite place of 2025 and rates up with the Albuquerque Balloon Festival and the Lake Havasu Pyrotechnics Show as bucket list destinations. Similar to these other two, Oshkosh is only on the list because of the event that takes place every July - the EAA Airventure Show. There are around 12,000 mostly primitive camping sites in a 400 acre field so you’re not here for the camping experience. But for a full week, you can join in with roughly 100,000 other visitors each day and partake in everything aviation related. We are not at all into airplanes or flying but we still had a great time. There are 4 hour long airshows each afternoon and two nights during the week are nighttime airshows with planes, fireworks, laser lights and drones which were some of the most incredible events to behold. My blog post listed below will provide all the details about attending and what you’ll see while at Oshkosh. Add it to your bucket list!

Oshkosh Air Show Blog Post

Large Group of Warbirds During Air Show

Colorful Aerobatic Biplane

Nighttime Air Show Begins

• Bear Paw Campground Itasca State Park, Shelvin Minnesota - In mid August, we spent 9 nights camping inside Itasca State Park in northern Minnesota. The park’s claim to fame is being the headwaters of the Mississippi River. It’s one of the few places along this 2300 mile long river where visitors are encouraged to walk across from one side to the other. It’s only about 15 feet and ankle deep so it isn’t all that impressive of a feat. There are many miles of hiking trails to enjoy. The 11 mile paved bike path right out of the campground can be linked with a gravel one way wilderness drive for a great 17 mile loop around the lake.

Being there for an extended time, we were able to venture out of the park to see some other sights. The Heartland Trail a little southeast of camp was a wonderful bike ride out of the town of Walker. Possibly the highlight of the stop was a day trip to the town of Detroit Lakes to see the trolls. These 6 art installations are scattered all around the area and we found it is a full day to get them all in since most of them are not right at a parking area but require a bit of a walk. But the effort was worth it.

 First Itasca State Park Blog Post

Calm Waters of Lake Itasca Near Sunset

The First Few Feet of the Mighty Mississippi River

Chris Mimics Ronny Funny Face Troll

• Turtle River State Park, Arvilla North Dakota - Located 25 miles outside of Grand Forks is the small town of Gilby North Dakota. Small is an understatement - population ~240 people! The nearest campground was this state park about 10 miles away. Why did we want to go to this blip on the map in the middle of farm fields and not much else? That’s easy - geocaching. We had heard about Gilby on a geocaching podcast we routinely listen to and it sounded quite intriguing. When we put together our travel plans for Minnesota, I realized that we were only going to be 150 miles from Gilby and talked Chris into heading there. This place is known as the Disneyland of geocaching mainly because of one very creative cache hider named Trycacheus.

We spend 3 full days driving all over the backroads of Gilby in search of some of the most creative caches we’ve done over our 15+ years of geocaching. Most of the hides involved some sort of puzzle that must be solved in order to open the final cache container and each puzzle was very unique. Some were complicated and required a fair amount of thought while others were simply cute and fun to solve. Brainpower was used for most of them but a few required strength or throwing accuracy. In our 6 nights there, we found 71 caches with 50 of them having over 100 favorite points. We were there a couple weeks before some big geocaching event but that probably worked out in our favor so we could enjoy the time spent solving them in solitude. There were a few other things to see in the area but not many. So if you are a geocacher, this is a must do stop, otherwise you will likely skip this part of North Dakota.

 

 Blog Post Not Written Yet

Giant Anvil Weathervane is a Geocache

ET Phone Home Bike Cache

Geocaching Swiss Army Knife Cache

• Black Beach Campground, Silver Bay Minnesota - This stop wasn’t planned until a couple weeks before staying there. We only decided to consider checking out this part of Minnesota known as the “North Shore” after several people talked about how beautiful it is and a tour of the state should include seeing it. It’s an area that extends about 150 miles northeast of Duluth to the Canadian border near Grand Portage all along the northern shore of Lake Superior. We worked 4 nights into our schedule to check it out. There are a fair number of campgrounds along the route and some of the state parks looked nice but didn’t have availability during our timeframe. We picked Silver Bay because it was roughly halfway along the North Shore so we could easily explore in either direction.

There are numerous places to see with lots of waterfalls and other attractions. Gooseberry Falls and Split Rock Lighthouse were two of our favorites. One day was spent exploring all the way up to Grand Portage just before the border crossing. We did a beautiful hike there and found lots of places to stop at on our drive back. If you do make it to the area, you should really check out Betty’s Pies in Two Harbors. Had we only known to include the North Shore as we were planning our tour of Minnesota, we would have allotted more time to explore.

 Blog Post Not Written Yet

Split Rock Lighthouse Reflection

Gooseberry Falls State Park

Black Beach

Finally Saw the Northern Lights

• Top of the World Campground, Tellico Plains Tennessee - This was our last long stop before heading back to Florida for the winter. We really enjoy spending time in the Appalachian Mountains and doing so in the fall is even better. Having spent most of our time in these mountains on the North Carolina side near Asheville, we picked this out of the way campground to spend a week exploring. We found some quirky things to see in the area including tours of Mayfield Dairy and Sweetwater Valley farms where we saw robotic cow milking equipment in action.

There are many nice hikes to do in this area but it might be most famous for Cherohala Skyway - a 43 mile stretch of road from Tellico Plain TN to Robbinsville NC. It’s a very scenic drive through the mountains and we had (accidentally) timed our visit to be near peak autumn colors. This road ties into another drive called the Tail of the Dragon and many car enthusiasts come here from far away to drive these roads. The day we drove a section of it, there was an Aston Martin car club enjoying the drive - a total of 38 from vintage ones like James Bond drove to brand new models. They would have been much more fun to drive than the Jeep!

 Blog Post Not Written Yet

View from Our Campsite at Top of the World

River View Along Cherohala Skyway

Indian Boundary Lake TN

Below is a map showing all 435 places we have camped in the past eight and a half years. For additional information on any of them, click on the link below the map which will open the actual Google Map I use. Pan and zoom on the map and by clicking on any pin, a window will pop up with the name of the location and a link to the blog post(s) for that place. Those interested in hiking, mountain biking, geocaching or nature photography, may find some of the posts useful if you plan to visit an area we have explored. Our blog posts are more about the interesting locations we discovered during our stops and less about campground reviews so don't expect to find much information about what campground is the best in a specific area.

Click HERE to Open Interactive Google Map

We still haven’t made any plans for where 2026 will take us but I’m sure we will come up with something in the next couple months.

Bemidji MN Part 2

Map of this blog's locations click this link to open the map

We spent more time exploring Voyageurs NP and International Falls yesterday than expected, so we didn’t get a chance to visit a couple of other sights we were hoping to see on our drive back. Since it was only about 20 miles to Camp Rabideau where a historic CCC camp is, we head out in the morning to explore some more of Northern Minnesota. We work a stop at Webster Lake Campground first to look for a geocache since it was kind of on our way. We park in the day use area and begin a short walk to the boardwalk where we are to begin our adventure.

Webster Lake

Boardwalk at Webster Lake

The type of cache we were searching for is a multi-cache. This means there are multiple stages to find. Each stage provides some information that leads us to the next stage. We knew there were a total of 6 stages. As we walked though the campground, we saw that this federally run facility actually has sites that would be large enough for us to fit in with our rig. It’s unlikely we will ever get back to the area to take advantage of the campground but good to know. We end up finding several of the stages but get stumped before figuring out where the final container was hidden. At least it was a pretty location for a short walk.

Trail

Camp Rabideau is not too far from Walker Lake. We see the sign at the end of a road leading back into this old Civilian Conservation Corps camp. Over the years, we have visited a fair number of spots where some of the 2650 CCC camps had been constructed back in the 1930’s but this one is special. It is one of only 3 camps that still in existence and is the best preserved of them.

Entrance to Camp Rabideau

Some CCC Buildings

We pull into the parking area and start to walk over to the nearby RV. There is a volunteer that stays here during the summer months and looks after the place and gives tours to visitors. She had seen us pull in and came out to welcome us. She had her keys for the numerous buildings and we head into the first one. This woman has been doing this hosting job for quite a few years so she really knows her stories about the history of each stop.

Curved Ceiling

Arched Walkway

In general, the buildings are in excellent shape. She explains that there are several volunteer crews that come here annually to take care of some of the maintenance required.

Cribbage Game in Progress

Old Twin Lens Camera

Unlike most of the other CCC camps, this one has been in use beyond the time when the 300 young men were stationed here. During WWII, the buildings were used by the Army. After the war, it sat idle until the University of Illinois leased the camp for their forestry and engineering students. Improvements were made to the buildings in the nearly 30 years Rabideau was under lease by the university.

Bunks in Barracks

Moose Painting

CCC Memorabilia Area

The old barracks are still used by the volunteers that come for maintenance. The old kitchen also looks like it could be used. We particularly liked the old butcher block table since we had a similar one in our old house in western New York. We spent about an hour touring the old camp and really learned a lot about this camp in particular but also some details about the CCC that we didn’t know. It’s not clear if all visitors get such a thorough tour but we appreciated the host’s time and knowledge.

Pantry Items

Big End-Grain Butcher Block Table

Large Gas Stove and Griddle

Menus from 1936 with Prices

We took advantage of the picnic shelter to have our lunch before heading out. We had one more stop in this the area that we had discovered from a geocache listing. There is a fire tower just a few miles to the north. We had asked the guide about it and she said it was still standing and open to climbing. We drive there and find the small parking area with a path to the tower.

Fire Tower

As soon as I saw this fire tower, I knew I was making the ascent on my own. While it seemed sturdy to me, Chris was not impressed with its stability. The geocache hidden is actually on the fire tower as opposed to on the ground nearby. The description mentions that it is 135 steps up to the cache but I find it difficult to count steps, watch my footing and also enjoy the view at the same time. So when I made it to the top level, I had no idea how many steps I had climbed. I enjoyed the view and took some pictures.

Graffiti

View from Top of Tower

Then I  started back down trying to decided where it could be hidden. The cache description also had a comment by the cache owner that it required a taller person to be able to reach the hiding spot which helped me narrow down the location. Sure enough I was able to reach out and find the small bison tube hidden in the end of one of the metal support rods. I tried not to look down as I reached out to make the grab and was very careful to not drop it otherwise I would have to make the trip a second time. When I did come down I noticed the forest service inspection sticker at the base of the tower. Most of the items checked had received a “green” rating but the ladder safety system was a “yellow”. Probably better that I hadn’t seen this before climbing or I may have chickened out.

Don't Look Down!

Safety Tag on Tower

We wanted to get a bike ride in but were looking for something different than the nearby Paul Bunyan Trail. Just a little southeast of Bemidji is Cass Lake which has a trail going around about 75% of it. The Migizi Trail is listed as 19.6 miles in AllTrails but they consider it an out and back trail since it isn’t a complete loop. But we realize that the Heartland Trail comes through Cass Lake as well and if we are willing to bike a couple miles of side streets in town, we could piece together a nice loop of around 15 miles. There are a fair number of geocaches along the route if we choose to take breaks in the ride. We start by parking in the Minnesota Welcome Center next to Cass Lake. There is a short spur trail that leads under the busy road to the northern end of the Migizi Trail. Initially the trail is along the busy road so not the most peaceful or scenic but after a few miles, it heads south into a wooded, more secluded section of trail.

Along Northern Section of Migizi Trail

More Secluded Portion of Trail

We did discover that the mosquitoes were hungry whenever we stopped to look for geocaches so we tried to limit how many we looked for. There were a few nice overlooks along the trail with nice views of Cass Lake. When the trail ended, we picked up a lightly traveled road for a half mile or so before getting onto the Heartland Trail and head north.

View of Cass Lake

Small Beach Area

After 3 miles, we are back in the town of Cass Lake where we take some surface roads back over to the rest area. I’m glad they have given the town a more pronounceable name than its original name in Ojibwe of Gaamiskwaawaakokaag - talk about a mouthful! We ended up with just over 15 miles - biking for 2 hours and stopped for caches or lunch for another 90 minutes. It was an okay ride but we have done better ones.

Welcome to Gaamiskwaawaakokaag 

Back at the campground that evening, there was a concert at the amphitheater. Mike and Tom performed a wide variety of tunes that we actually knew and could sing along to.

Mike and Tom Perform

The following day we head over to Hobson Memorial Forest about 5 miles east of camp. There were 7 geocaches hidden there and several miles of trails. We quickly discovered that this set of trails is like many others in the area - they are generally used for cross country skiing, not hiking. The trails were overgrown and there were a few spots where the storm had brought down some trees across the trail and since winter is a long ways off, they had not been clear yet.

Trailhead at Hobson Memorial Forest

Unmowed Trail

That doesn’t mean we turned back since none of the conditions were real bad. However at one of the early geocaches we went looking for, we had a bit of an incident. The cache was maybe 20 yards into the woods along the trail. The understory was rather thick, so we were moving slowly as we tried to get to ground zero. Just as we were close enough to start looking in earnest, I felt a something on my shoulder. I initially assumed I had simply brushed up against another tree branch and got poked.

Large Fungus

But then I felt something on my leg and realized I had riled up some sort of ground based bee or wasp nest. I started to walk away from the area until I noticed more of them flying around. At that point I went into full flight mode. I just started running as fast as I could which wasn’t terribly fast given the amount of brush. Chris wasn’t positive what was going on other than her husband was yelling and running away further into the woods. I eventually got away from the danger but it did take some effort to get back to the trail. I assessed the stings and knew they were going to swell up and hurt but not bad enough to call it quits for the rest of the hike. We did however leave this cache for the next finder and posted a “did not find” warning future cachers of the possible danger.

We continued the walk and had to climb over a few fallen trees along the way but didn’t need to turn back at any point. There were a few small ponds along the trail and even found some sort of shelter with a fire ring and several makeshift benches. We ended up getting back to the car finding 5 of the 7 hides, getting in about 2.5 miles and had 2 new stings that would hurt for days. This won’t make our best hike list but it was okay nonetheless.

Fallen Trees on Trail

Dock Doesn't Look Safe

Ready for a Campfire

Inside Shelter

That evening was another concert at the amphitheater. Tonight’s performer was Donna and Greg Gaston. They sang a lot of folk songs we knew with some older ones from Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez. It was a nice way to end the day.

Donna and Greg Gaston Perform

We only had a couple more days at Bemidji and had a few places we wanted to visit. One was to find an older geocache hidden back in 2001 and another spot was to check out an area called the Lost 40. They weren’t really in the same direction but we came up with a driving route that would get us to both spots and back to camp.

The Lost 40 is a section of forest that has some old growth trees and was supposed to be an interesting place to walk though. Back in 1882, a crew of surveyors was dividing up the Minnesota forestland into 40 acre parcels to be sold off for logging or homesteading. Apparently the crew made some errors in their measurements and one parcel was never identified to be sold. Having been spared any logging activity, there are some of the largest and oldest red and white pine trees. It’s now under the management of the National Forest system to maintain its old growth characteristics. It’s about 25 miles east of the town of Blackduck. While going through town this time, we discovered the town’s original blackduck statue.

The Original Blackduck Statue

Lost Forty This Way

Given the remote spot, we were surprised to find so many other visitors although it being Labor Day may have contributed to the crowds. There is a loop trail of almost 1 mile and another spur trail at the far end of the loop.

Chris Leads the Way at Lost 40

A Big Pine Tree

It was a pleasant walk in the woods. There was both an EarthCache and a traditional geocache hidden in the woods along the trail. The trees were definitely big, but they didn’t stand out as enormous. In the back of my mind, I was expecting the hike to be like the ones we did out west in the redwoods. Even a 300 year old pine doesn’t get as big as redwoods. I’m not sure I would consider this a must do stop in the area but we still enjoyed our visit.

Chris Picks Her Favorite Tree

Fallen Giant

Next we start to head south towards the old cache but make a stop along the way at another national forest area to do a short walk on the Simpson Creek Trail. We only walked enough of the trail to find the geocache hidden here and then we wandered around the boat launch area.

Start of Simpson Creek Trail

Dock Along Boat Ramp

As we continued south, we stopped to check out Lake Winnibigoshish and its dam. This is another portion of the Mississippi River about 170 miles from the headwaters at Lake Itasca. A fair number of people were out fishing just below the dam.

Dam on the Mississippi River

Lake Winnibigoshish

Our main mission of finding the old geocache took us on a dirt road for about 2 miles south of US Route 2 near the town of Bena Minnesota. The drive was fine and there was a small pullout near another service road. From our map, it looked like we had about a half mile walk back into the woods to find this one. Fortunately we had read logs from previous finders to know that there was a very good likelihood of bugs this time of year. We had long pants and long sleeve shirts but were also forced to don the dreaded head nets. Good thing we had them because we were swarmed by mosquitoes and flies. At times it seemed like there was a cloud of bugs following us along the path. The cache itself was a few hundred feet off the trail and I was the one forced to venture in to find it. I found it relatively quickly but my normal habit of reading through the log books of a really old cache was cut short because of the bugs.

Chris Smiles Under Her Head Net

The rest of the drive was easy, just following Route 2 into Bemidji. We did stop at another large fish display. It seems like Minnesotans love their fish. This big muskie appears to actually be a building with the door in its mouth. That night we were predicted to have favorable conditions for northern lights but alas, even though we are very far north, we had no luck seeing them.

Definitely a BIG Fish

No Aurora Tonight for Us

I think we overestimated how much there was to see in the Bemidji area. Spending 9 nights was definitely more than we needed. I think part of our original reason for our length of stay was to cover the Labor Day weekend since camping reservations can often be difficult to get. We had to expand our day trips by quite a distance just to fill the time. I’m not saying to avoid the area but a few nights would have been sufficient. On our last full day, we took it easy and I walked to a few geocaches we hadn’t gotten to within the park. The beach was deserted on the Tuesday after the holiday.

Empty Beach at Bemidji SP

Next stop Gilby North Dakota - the Disneyland of geocaching!