Bemidji, Home of Paul Bunyan & Babe, the Blue Ox

Our destination last Friday was Bemidji MN, another community I probably had never visited before.  (If I have, it was back in 1970.) We were there to meet a crew of geocachers who left Maple Grove at midnight. Minnesota cachers were attending events in 8 communities in the state (north to south, east to west) in a 24 hour period. We planned on attending four of the day's events.

We arrived Friday afternoon with time to explore the community, find some geocaches, locate our hotel and enjoy a delicious meal. Here are some of the sights from this northern Minnesota community.

Paul & Babe are located along the shore at the Visitor's Center

the area was undergoing some construction

the Mississippi River headwaters is 

very near the community

Bemidji - First City on the Mississippi 

some of the statue artwork in downtown Bemidji

interesting colors and mosaic

the kitty is looking up at the girl reading her book

the dog is wanting some ice cream, too

the boy is also reading a book

mural on the side of a building

depicting the history of the land and the lake 

We drove from Bemidji to Crookston where the cachers met at a McDonalds for lunch. The real cool part of that stop was meeting someone from Grand Forks whose mother had the same last name and spelling of Hubby. The two guys had a very nice visit. We also connected with 2 geocachers we had met at events we had attended in Minneapolis in May, and another cacher we had met in Sioux Falls at an event last month. The third event was at a park in Fergus Falls where we met a MN cacher we had met for the first time at an event in the Black Hills last summer. We made the final event, just before 9:00 PM at Redwood Falls. We said our hellos and goodbyes and headed home.

The bonus to the day's adventure was receiving a Magical Mystery Tour geo-coin at each event. The center multi-colored 'coin' was given to us by a cacher who ordered her own coins just for the 24 hour adventure. Neat!

This is the woman responsible for organizing the Magical Mystery Tour. I bet you can recognize a theme for the day. Another fun day and a successful geocaching adventure.

Wahpeton & Breckenridge

These two communities are divided by the Red River, putting the first community in North Dakota and the second in Minnesota. This was our first stop on our caching adventure last weekend. It had been years since I had been to either community. Our Favorite Son was just a toddler when a friend and I took our kids to the zoo and the guys attended a college football game. Our Favorite Son turned 34 on Wednesday, so when I say YEARS, I did mean YEARS since our last visit.

Of course this visit was short;  a potty break, grab some junk food for the road, a couple of geocaches, and we were on our way. But I did get some photos before leaving the two communities.

Wahpeton, North Dakota

building across from county government building

Leach Public Library

I liked the words engraved below the arch

and above the entrance

"FREE TO ALL"

words such as these were engraved on the two sides 

(probably all four) of the library

statue at the corner across the street

memorial to "Richland County Citizens

who rendered service to our country during

The Great World War' 1917-1918

the County Courthouse copula 

courthouse across the street from the library

Brekenridge, Minnesota

This monument was placed at the

headwaters of the Red River of the North

as it begins its 550 mile northward journey at this point

it flows to Lake Winnipeg, Winnipeg Canada

it is the longest north flowing river 

I happened to notice the public library building across the river in Brekenridge was a modern building with sleek lines and angles; no stately Carnegie Library building.

This was Friday morning, gray overcast skies and a breeze strong enough to keep most of the bugs at bay. Our weekend adventure covered 825 miles, just to attend 4 geocaching events in 1 day. The bonus was the great people we got to meet and the interesting places we saw along the way. Those ingredients make for a successful road trip.

Vining MN

Vining,  Minnesota would not be on my list of places to visit. Fewer than 100 people live in the little hamlet beside the highway, near a lake. (Everywhere is near a lake in that part of Minnesota.) We did not drive all the streets. I believe there are two businesses, maybe three on what must be Vining's Main Street.

So why would we stop in Vining MN? Geocaching, of course. We were on our way to Bemidji MN to join the Magical Mystery Tour, a twenty-four hour adventure (starting at midnight and ending at midnight) visiting 8 MN communities, covering about 900 miles, creating 8 events. Our plan was to participate in 4 of those events.

So what brought us to Vining? The Foot.

This 12' tall foot was built by Ken Nyberg using 10-guage steel. He created The Foot in 1988. Why? "I just thought Vining needed something different," he says.

Nyberg, now retired, was a welder and professional construction foreman.

A 20' tall clothespin between the Vining Post Office and

one of the two visible businesses along the Main Street.

The Indian on horseback was created from 1200 pieces of multi-shaped metal.

Located east of the Main Street buildings and next to the gas station and convenience store is the park of more statues.

The giant square knot is 10' tall and weighs more than half a ton.

 

life-size welder

amazing detail 

Some locals were at The Foot when we stopped. They shared Nyberg lives nearby and if we had the time, we should drive out to his shop. More of his creations reside there.

We decided we had quite the variety in the Nyberg Park, so we did not drive to his shop.

I learned the elephant is created from lawn mower parts, mostly blades.

Nyberg is 77 years old. He is a very modest man. Take the time to watch this Interview from 2011.

When asked why he does it, creating scrap-metal sculptures, Nyberg says, "I get to choose what I do and when and how long I work on things. What could be better than that?"

giant hook and chain

knife cutting an apple

Nyberg's daughter Karen, is an astronaut. She has worked on and lived on the international space station, twice. 

my favorite metal art

to show how big the structures are

cricket on the pliers

free standing coffee mug spilling coffee

Nyberg has donated statues to other communities in Otter Tail County, MN. We missed the one in Fergus Falls, nor did we see the Extension Cord or the Door and Doorknob statues. Maybe the next time. One never knows...

Bakers

The grandkids spent a Friday and part of Saturday with us earlier this month. When I asked Miss W what we should do...the parks, the zoo? She asked if we could bake again. I said Yes, because I had blueberries to use and G'pa had asked for cookies.

They played at the park in the morning, but after lunch and afternoon naps...it was baking time!

washing dishes?

or playing in the sink?

Doesn't matter, as it keeps them busy for a LONG time!

the blueberry muffins

I found the recipe in a book I had read, about a culinary artist 

in Colorado who solves murder mysteries. Donna: I know you will 

know the author, as you have read the books. 

It is an excellent blueberry muffin recipe.

 I had to buy more flour as Miss W and I have used all I had on hand. I also stocked up on sugar and will have to get eggs before her next visit later this week.

Our May & Early June Road Trips

Other than birthday celebrations and activities with the grand kids, we have been geocaching road tripping. We've had several goals we have wanted to reach when we got home this spring. One was a milestone of 100 Multi Caches. For non-cachers, multi caches have two or more steps or stages, usually solving some sort of puzzle or doing some research, before finding the cache at the final location. We accomplished that goal by traveling to area cemeteries. We had around 25 to complete successfully, and we did before the end of May.

Once that goal was checked, we worked on the next one: 1080 geocaches from the southern tip of SD/IA north along the border of SD/MN and then east along the ND/SD border to north of Aberdeen. We completed more than half of them from IA north along the SD/MN border last summer and fall. Hip surgery in October curtailed further geocaching. That was okay as more caches were added to that trail of over 700. Our goal was to get them ALL before the end of June. We made a couple of little day trips getting more than 100 one day and about 70 on another. But we knew if we were EVER going to complete it, we would have to go for several days, staying in hotels. The cool part of this series of caches called the BLT (Border Line Trail) was that most of the caches were Unknown or Puzzle caches. In this case, the coordinates were not where they were expected to be. Sometimes we would be driving east for a mile or two and then head north for some miles and then west for some miles. I know we put nearly 1000 miles on the van the past two months completing the 450 caches that remained in the BLT. As of last Sunday, we can check that goal off the list!

This post is some of what we were treated to while geocaching from Aberdeen to the MN border.

statue at a cemetery in Aberdeen

finding a cache on an old school bell in a small town

a small chapel at another country cemetery

a children's slide attached to a tree trunk

there were steps cut into the trunk on the other side

a replica (dog house?) of the original farm house

the farm house today

soybean field

many, many ponds in northeast SD

mallards

but we also saw geese, sand hill cranes, pelicans

shetlands still wearing their winter coats

caching in North Dakota

abandoned farms

winding country roads

there should be a great pheasant hunting this fall

my friend passed away just before Thanksgiving 2014

she was diagnosed with cancer in August and gone in November

coming upon her grave was a bonus to the day

my dad told me about the granite border markers

I was tickled pink to see them in fields along the ND/SD border

turtles were migrating across the country roads

we also saw deer, wild turkeys, and lots of rodents

wild roses growing along the sides of the gravel roads

and in the ditches

as the flowers 'age' their color becomes less vibrant

the community of White Rock

it once had 7 grain elevators, 3 hotels, 4 saloons,

2 banks, a large department store, 2 lumber yards, 2 drug stores,

2 churches, and a K-12 school

population: THEN 600; TODAY 4

at the corner of the ND/SD/MN border

(actually MN is across the river)

I was thrilled the cache was at one of the granite markers

White Rock was in SD

once we crossed the bridge, we were in MN

To complete that part of the BLT and get some other area caches that included some first to find caches, took 4 days, Sunday through Wednesday. We did a previous 1 day trip collecting some caches between Watertown and Aberdeen. We went back north on Friday and again on Sunday. We don't have EVERY cache in the northeast part of the state, but we do have most of them.

We saw wildlife we don't normally see. We drove through small towns we had never been to before. We saw new, large homes on farms and abandoned farmsteads. One day we traveled the same roads 6 times to get to one cache. Because of all the lakes in the northern part of the state, the trip was 9-12 miles...six times. We finally got it! We saw flat farmland of black, fertile soil in the James River valley and then the grassland on the rolling Coteau hills, ranching country. We geocached in the fourth or maybe fifth largest community in SD and in ghost towns like White Rock. This road trip certainly had variety.