Mille Lacs for the Day

Yesterday I made yogurt and today it was ready to go in the fridge. 

I let Scott sleep while I had breakfast. 

Brooke woke me up to take the prego pic.

As I do almost every week.

For the first time I finally feel hungry all the time and I can eat bigger portions. My face is also getting fuller. I sometimes don't recognize myself in the mirror. 

You're still beautiful killer bee.

I wanted to go camping one last time before baby comes. Actually, I want to do a lot of things before baby comes. So, we got all our gear packed up. 

I had a bit of herb pesto pasta and a small shrimp po-boy sandwich.

Brooke was eating the pesto, but she couldn't handle it. I decided to let her have my sandwich.

Some foods still gross me out.

We had some ice cream before we left.

I had just made it the night before. Reese's peanut butter cups and Butterfingers. We couldn't help but try some before we left.

We decided to head north to the Mille Lacs area. I'd love to go farther northwest but thought it best to stay somewhere close by just in case. 

Scott was worried about doing a backpacking site at Mille Lacs Kathio, plus the ranger said the bugs are really bad right now so we settled on a walk in site.

I didn't want to have to hike a few miles with a prego through the mosquito-infested woods.

I kind of wished we had brought our bigger tent. 

After dousing ourselves in bug spray we went for a hike. 

Most of the trees were deciduous except for a patch or two of pines. We later found out that the forest was predominantly conifers and after the old growth was cut down only a few tracts remain of the original pines that dominated this part of central Minnesota.

The park had two small lakes and river that ran through. I wish we could have brought our kayaks. 

Our hiking path took us to a few scenic outlooks.

I thought it a appropriate to take a picture at said outlooks.

We cut through one of the campgrounds on our way back. Apparently its a thing here to have sign with your name on it. 

When we were driving towards our campsite I saw there was a lookout tower so we stopped to check it out. 

This thing was ricketier than all heck.

Only 6 people can be on it at a time. 

The stairs were pretty steep and the tower was kind of shaky. I had to keep myself from looking down. 

Once we got to the top it was worth the view.

There's Mille Lacs Lake just beyond the trees.

Sceninc for sure, but probably the scariest lookout tower I've ever went in.

The walk down was even worse.

We were only a half-hour from Brainerd. After seeing Fargo we wanted to go check it out. It wasn't until we got into town that we realized Bemidji has the Paul Bunyan statue.

I was a bit disappointed 

We were hungry for dinner and settled on this Tex-Mex restaurant. 

I thought that it was called Panchos de Lefty, but it was actually Panchos & Lefty.

We probably should have shared something since we both got a lot of food. 

We were both clearly full after our monstrous dinners.

The water tower in Brainerd was unusual, so I told Brooke, "Quick take a picture."

Brainerd did have a Paul Bunyan amusement park.

No Paul statue, but Babe wasn't a bad fill-in.

Unfortunately it was already closed for the evening.

When we were driving back we spotted dozens of deer. As we got back to the camp site, a turkey was on the prowl.

Back at the campsite we thought we'd roast some marshmallows over the fire. Our strike anywhere matches weren't exactly striking anywhere. 

We went back into town to get a lighter. 

The Grand Casino had it's own grocery store, which sold a lot of lard.

I think the wood was too wet because we couldn't get a fire to stay going. After awhile we gave up and headed to bed early. 

The next morning I had to pee really bad. When I went back into the tent to go back to sleep I felt something on my back. When I went to scratch it a bug came off. I got up to look to see what it was.

I woke up Scott and told him a bug bit me. Then he said, There's a tick on your back! We got rid of that one and checked to see if anymore were on me. That's when I found another one stuck on my hand. We checked again and didn't find anymore. We thought we'd go back to sleep when we saw one crawling up the tent. We decided that's it lets get out of here.

We were freaking out because we've never dealt with any ticks in all the years of camping. We didn't really know the difference between a wood tick and a deer tick. Only the later has lyme disease. 

Luckily these jerks offs were wood ticks. Also it takes at least 24 hours for a deer tick to transmit the disease. So check early and check often and remove it as soon as you see one.

We burned the ones we caught. 

Scott checked the tent carefully before packing it up. 

It was early but we were out of there. Once we got in our car I found one crawling next to me. We couldn't escape these buggers. 

We drove up along the western shore of Mille Lacs until we found a place to eat.

I was a starvin marvin so we found a small cafe in Garrison. 

Our waitress apologized for the whip cream melting all over Scott's pancakes. Then said, No don't take a picture of that ugly thing. 

They were damn good even if they didn't look pretty.

Since we had time to kill Scott said we should drive around the whole lake. So we did, stopping once in awhile.

After making all the way around we took MN-47 back to the cities.