Travel Tuesday: Northern Minnesota Trip, Part Three

Welcome back to the final installment of my recap of our trip to Northern Minnesota! If you missed the previous two posts, you can find them here:

Northern Minnesota Trip: Part One

Northern Minnesota Trip: Part Two

Thursday, July 29th, our plan was to go up to Itasca State Park, where the Mississippi headwaters are located, and do some hiking. Our trip happened when the wildfires in Canada were really bad, so this morning we woke up to very hazy and smoky conditions. We were deciding for awhile what we wanted to do, and half of us decided to go there anyway and half decided to stay back at the cabin. Ironically, even though we were going farther north to get to the State Park, the air conditions were significantly better there than by the cabin.

A look at the hazy conditions from the dock at the cabin.

The drive there from the cabin was about an hour and a half (Thankfully we had no car issues this time!); once we got there, we looked in the visitors' center for a little bit, then we did a quick walk to the headwaters and spent a little time there. 

We didn't get to do the hiking we wanted to, but after a quick walk around the headwaters, we drove to a little picnic spot and had some lunch. 

My brother found these locally made sodas in the gift shop- they were very good and had some fun flavors! I've since found them at our local Target too!

I thought the closest main town (Bemidji) was only half an hour or so away, so we decided to stop there on the way home. It was actually almost an hour's drive... We stopped to see the big Paul Bunyan and Babe statues and the kids were able to play in a pretty neat playground for awhile to burn off steam before our drive back to the cabin.

We ended the evening with a boat ride like usual. We ended up seeing a group of 6 or 7 loons on the lake which was really neat!

Friday the 30th was our last full day of vacation. We started the day by driving to nearby Woman Lake Lodge, which is famous for their homemade donuts. They did not disappoint! We got a dozen to sample :)

Why thank you, I DO deserve a donut ;)

I could definitely go for one of these fresh donuts right now!

We spent the rest of the day just relaxing- fishing, boat rides, etc. We also took a very rare family photo :)

Hubby brought his nice camera on our last boat ride and was able to get really nice pictures of the group and the lake:

Saturday the 31st we packed up and headed home. We stopped in the city of Brainerd on our way home, hoping to do some mini golf at Pirates Cove. The parking lot was absolutely packed, so we decided to forgo it this time. Instead we picked up some McDonalds (and Starbucks- the important things!) and had a picnic in another State Park on the way home. Getting our money's worth of our annual State Parks pass we bought on this trip!

I was the official food carrier 😂 And yes, we did get another dozen donuts to bring home with us!

All in all we had a very good time on this trip! It's nice to just get away from everything and enjoy God's country :) I hope you enjoyed this look into our family vacation! God willing we have a couple more trips coming up the next few months, which I definitely plan on recapping for you on upcoming Travel Tuesday posts. I am also hoping to do a throwback Disney trip series from our 2018 Disneyland trip, so make sure you're following along so you don't miss out on the fun!