Odometer: Still 146937
Distance So Far: Still 2219
Days On the Road: 8
Final Stop: Virginia, MN

Part of the fun of having a family Whatsapp is that you get to experience the trip in real time, and then again later as a blog post! Mom has taken on the responsibility of telegraphing the Live POV. During the day, we got updates:

From Mom:

So far today we have driven to The Lake of the Woods in Minnesota. It is a huge lake which is half in US, half in Canada and is the reason the border of Minnesota has a little jag at the too. It was so refreshing to sit on the end of the dock and dangle our feet in the VERY cold water! A boater told us the water temp was 59 degrees!. It’s only 64 degrees outside right now…almost noon!

[We’re in] Minnesota headed to International Falls. We should be there in 1.5 hours and stop in Virginia, Minnesota for the night. Tomorrow we will be in Wisconsin take a boat tour around the Apostle Islands on Lake Superior!

And later…

It didn’t rain that hard for long, but it is still coming down. They were huge drops. Almost looked like hail. And there was thunder and lightning! We had so much fun!

We are loving it! Now we are headed for Virginia, Minnesota to eat dinner and find our motel. The time is going by so quickly! Bit I don’t think we’ve ever had so much fun!

The leaves around here are just barely starting to turn colors. In 3 weeks I’ll probably send another, much different picture!

From Dad:

Leaving Thief River Falls this morning, we headed back north and east to Lake of the Woods. This huge lake is the reason Minnesota has a notch on top of it. For some reason, the agreement between the US and Canada requires bodies of water to be divided according to some strange formula, so the Red Lake Indian Reservation, which is above the 49th parallel and attached to Canadian mainland, is in the United States. There is another weird configuration in Washington State, which causes people living in an area on Puget Sound to drive through Canada to get to the rest of the US. Weird.Anyway, we drove down to the lake. Linda wanted to put her feet in the water, which a local
boater told us was 49 degrees. After our feet were sufficiently numb, we continued on our way eastward. We drove along the beautiful Rainy River, which is the border with Canada, to International Falls. No Falls. There were once, but they dammed the river for a paper mill. So we drove over to Voyageurs National Park on Rainy Lake. This park is in memory of the fur
traders in the 1700’s who paddled and portaged their canoes along this route from Montreal to Lake Athabasca in Alberta. The park extends quite a ways to the east from International Falls, taking in all or part of 4 lakes, plus the river that connects them. Once again, we stopped to put our feet in the water, which was somewhat warmer than Lake of the Woods. While we sat on
the dock taking pictures, we saw lightning strike about a mile away, so decided we should go back to the car. Before we got our shoes on, it started to rain, and by the time we got to the car, it was pouring hard. I ducked under the hatchback while I loaded stuff in the car, so stayed
fairly dry. Note: I did not even know there was a Voyageurs National Park, so chalk one up to discovery.

It rained on and off for the rest of the day. We arrived at our hotel in Virginia, MN, then went our for pizza. After we got back, the rain let loose for a long time.