When we left the Apostle Islands area we moved to Duluth, Minnesota for a few days and then Bemidji, Minnesota.
While in Duluth we took the opportunity to take advantage of being close to a larger town to take care of some items. Lately we have been staying in areas where you did not have access to all the services we were used to back home. For example big grocery stores, Wells Fargo banks and even a Walmart. We have enjoyed being close to all the national parks and staying in campgrounds away from big towns but at times it is inconvenient.
I like having a grocery store that has both meat and seafood markets in addition to big fruit and vegetable areas. I would always shop at the HEB grocery stores at home. I can buy some groceries at a Walmart but for the most part I prefer a regular grocery store. We have used Walmart on these trips as an alternative to going to a Wells Fargo bank. When we needed cash we would go in a Walmart and purchase something so we could get cash back. In a few places we could not even find a Walmart. We did discover that some of the small towns actually had a stand alone Wells Fargo ATM, no bank in the town just an ATM. We circled a little town a couple of times while in Wisconsin looking for a Wells Fargo only to discover it was a stand alone ATM located at a service station.
While in Duluth I actually had a chance to find a nail salon and get a manicure and pedicure. Bruce took the car to a Ford dealer to have it serviced and the tires rotated. While they were doing that he walked over to the mall by the dealer and did some shopping. We then found a Texas Roadhouse and went out to dinner. We have really missed their salads while traveling. We also took time to go to Duluth Trading in downtown Duluth by the harbor. It is an interesting store, they sale clothes, shoes and various little gadgets for the working man. I have bought stuff from them via catalog over the years. We spent a couple of hours there and lots of money.
We also used this break as a time to adjust our clothing in the coach. When we left on this trip we each packed one tote of clothes to put in the basement area. These were our heavier winter clothes that we did not need when we moved into the coach in April. We need them now so we brought in winter clothing and put much of our lighter weight clothes into the totes. I am pretty sure I will not be needing any of my shorts again until next year since most mornings lately it has been in the upper 40’s when we get up and many days it does not get above the mid 60’s. We are heading off to Isle Royal National Park next week and it might not even get up to the 60’s while we are there.
We stayed in Duluth a few days then moved to Bemidji, we will return to Duluth on Labor Day where we will leave the coach while we fly to Isle Royal. When we were making our reservations a month or so ago we could not find a RV park in Duluth that had openings over Labor Day Weekend so we arranged to move here. This area is the headwaters of the Mississippi River. In fact we crossed the Mississippi River at least 3 times while driving the 3 hours to get here. It is not near as large here as what we are used to seeing in Baton Rouge or New Orleans. If the weather is nice on Saturday (it has been raining all afternoon) we might go to view the park that is designated as the place where the Mississippi Rivers starts. In one place you supposed to be able to walk across the river as it is some small, which I can believe from some of the spots we saw along the way.
Bruce and I thought the Mississippi was the longest river in the US but we were wrong, it is the Missouri River which flow into the Mississippi at one point.