Ramada Hotel Brainerd Baxter

So now I'm playing catchup…this blog is really a journal entry more for our own personal trip memoirs than as an update for you. You are, however, invited to read and comments are always appreciated. It is my intent to print out this entire blog for the girls, comment and all. Our favorite "across the road neighbor’" is going to help us make a big scrapbook when we ...

... had taking pictures of all the wildlife. Maybe i should get a t'shirt that says "Tree hugger and proud of it" or something, or naw, my wolf shirts I bought will probably spell that out. Tomorrow we do another long haul toward home. Then its clean up, laundry, get the dogs, see my boyfriend and get ready for my knee surgery. So the busy period isn't over yet. But at least I had a good time and was able to focus on that and that alone. What a blast.

Day 1 Today was a long day of sorts, we didn't leave home right away, in fact we didn't leave till early afternoon. I woke up at 6 am EDT to head into work to get all the loose strings tied up nice and neat in a bundle, then home to pack up my truck for the trip out west, after repacking it 3 times before I came up with a decent packing load (so stuff wouldn't fall out, or we wouldn't have to ...

... you places like that, just places that you might not have stopped at that maybe unique to the area, geological features, or areas of special interest, but sometimes they are just stuck in a ditch or a walmart parking lot. They can be anywhere. So thats about some and substance for the day, just kind of vegging out and trying to kick back out and relax. Like I said tomorrow's destination is home and I return to work Tuesday.

... we arrived in little falls, brad commented on how strange it was that the terrible pavement hadn't given any of us a flat tire, and within a few blocks, i realized that in fact it had--my front tire was flat. another slightly scary bit was when we were going from little falls to the church where we'd stayed, which was just outside of the city limits. the pastor had given us driving (rather than biking ...

... I passed though Christine ND, so seeing as I've got a town called Tupper on my must see list For a period of time I'm going to be somewhere in between my first and last names. Made it to Brainerd MN at midnight stopped at a Super 8. Went in to ask and they wanted $83 bucks, but the guy on front desk was really sweet and gave me the corporate rate.$63.:) then stayed up till 4 am doing laundry.

... the supplied thoroughbreds or bring your own. Everyone stands in the middle of a circle and places their turtle on the line, they splash them with water and cheer until one of the turtles makes it past the outer circle. We had a quick look around the pioneer village, but we didn't have much time there. American fact: A&W isn't just a pop company, it's a burger restaurant chain.

... front, they were too far away to get a picture though. l learnt a valuable lesson, don't order Lemon, Lime & Bitters in America, they don't know what it is. They brought me a pink drink with a piece of lemon and a piece of lime in it, I'm not sure what it was, maybe pink grapefruit, but it wasn't nice. Our meals on the other hand, were good and very big.

... big that he was knocking things over and causing problems for the villagers, so he decided to leave and become a logger. He was so strong that he could chop down 100 trees with one swing of his axe (but he was also environmentally conscious and planted a tree for each one he cut down). As he left the village, he was walking along in the snow and he saw something blue ...

... For roughly 3 miles the trail is covered by medium sized rocks. By which I mean, nothing so big that you have to literally climb over it. You can step most of the way up. At about the 3 mile point, you hit the treeline. Basically, the tree canopy disappears and you're hiking exposed to the weather. Also, the rocks get a lot bigger. The first section above the treeline is characterized by certain boulders that have iron bars placed in them so that you can pull yourself over ...