Wilderness Wandering

We are on our way! We left our home yesterday and traveled to DeKalb, IL. You’re right! There are no National Parks in IL. We drove Calypso to the NIU vs SIU football game and tailgated with lots of friends. Tim is an alumnus of both.

After the game, we drove to Lanesboro, MN, located in the Driftless Zone in southeast MN (where the last glacier did not go). We decided to try boondocking. Boondocking is unsupported camping. We pulled into The Root River Trailhead parking lot about midnight.

When we woke up, we discovered that the trailhead was a fabulous place to camp. We were on a pretty little pond with picnic tables beside the pond. There was a clean port-a potty. 😊

The Root River Trail is one of our favorite bike trails. It is a 42 mile long fully black topped, relatively flat trail that meanders along the beautiful Root River and through several charming little towns. We saw squirrels, a coyote, rabbits, a family of turkeys, and a hawk with its breakfast in its claws.

We rode from Lanesboro to Rutherford and passed through several other charming towns, all of which had cute cafes advertising pie. Our first stop – yes, there was more than one…was The Aroma Pie Shoppe. I had raspberry peach crumb. It was delectable. Tim had coconut cream pie. It was mouthwatering as well. We returned to the van and had salad for lunch. Our last stop before departing Lanesboro was the Home Sweet Home Cafe. We shared a piece of blackberry pear pie.

Next stop is Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. TRNP will be the first park of this trip, and our 7th national park overall.

All the light poles had poetry on them ❤️