Sarah, Rob, Ethan, April and I (all REU students from the University) decided to go on a camping trip to see parts of northern Minnesota. We visited St. Croix State Park, Duluth, Lake Bemidji State Park, and Itasca State Park. After getting together a large tent, sleeping bags, and food we left Friday the 13th for our adventure!

Friday was mostly spent finishing things up at work and packing. We left after dinner for St. Croix State Park, the first stop on our road trip! At about 8:30 we arrived and set up our tent, and then found an open place to go stargazing. Rob lives in New York City and hadn't seen the stars since he was seven, so stargazing was at the top of our list of things we had to do! Ethan and April pointed out some constellations, and we also saw some shooting stars, a sattelite, and the milky way!

In the morning we took down the tent and left for Duluth, which was only an hour and half away. Sarah lived there when she was very young and she wated to see it again! We had a picnic by Lake Superior and watched the bridge lift up and down to let boats pass underneath. After lunch we headed out for Lake Bemidji State Park and got our tent set up there. Lake Bemidji has a boardwalk trail that goes out into a large bog, so we did some hiking on that and got to see a lot of moss and ferns and insect-eating plants! That evening we made shish-ka-bobs for dinner and roasted marshmallows.

Sunday morning we drove to Lake Itasca, which is where the Mississippi River starts. The Mississippi just starts out as this little rocky creek, we walked a ways down it and it never got deeper than mid-calf or much wider than four feet! It rained pretty hard for a while, then after it stopped we cooked out brats and hotdogs. April described our trip pretty aptly as extended picnicing!