GRR: Brainerd to Grand Rapids

We visited the Cuyuna Range Historical Museum in Crosby, Minnesota. Lots of stuff but little interpretive signage.

Some of the things brought back my own memories, though, like being in this depot looking at a Brownie Scout uniform and remembering when my Brownie troop took the train for a day trip from Decatur, Illinois, to St. Louis, Missouri, and back.

This display made me glad I only had home permanents as a child.

We also visited the Croft Mine Historic Park in Crosby. They offered a simulated mine tour but no one knew where to find the tour guide so we didn’t get to do that. They had lots of outside interpretive signage that didn’t photograph well at all so I guess you need to go yourself if you want to learn about mining in Minnesota. I couldn’t resist including this picture of the the thing that sets off the dynamite blasts, though. Now I know it’s not a figment of the imagination of the coyote and road runner cartoonist.

After those two visits we did what we usually did for the 4th of July when we lived in a house. Stayed home. Back then we figured the holiday weekends were when the inexperienced went camping so we went the weekend before or after.  Of course this time home was in a campground but the Gull Lake Recreation Area was calmer than many where we have camped so we survived just fine. The staff put flags at all the campsites which was all the celebration we felt we needed. We are grateful for the freedom this country offers us but we don’t feel a need to mingle with crowds to express that gratitude.

The next day we moved on. We saw what, at first, looked like a couple of those big round hay bales each sitting on its own trailer. A closer look showed them to be duck blinds. They fooled me so I imagine they fool the geese and pheasants that are likely hunted from them. At least I “think” I’m smarter than the birds.

There was a curve in the road facing a building missing its front corner. A new version of a drive-in?

North of Aitkin, Minnesota, are several sod farms. We pay people to grow grass! So that when we build a new house we don’t have to wait to have a lawn. We Americans must be the most impatient people in the world.

The Great River Road turned off the pavement onto a gravel road. We followed it, catching an occasional glimpse of the river. But, shortly after we crossed Hwy 169 we decided we’d had enough bouncing so we turned back and took Hwy 169 north to Grand Rapids.

It’s a good thing we did. We didn’t have enough time for the Forest History Center in Grand Rapids even having taken the faster route. We got to see the inside displays but missed the whole logging camp with costumed interpreters. If you go here, allow at least a half a day for your visit, please.

We would have stayed overnight to see the rest of it but they would be closed for the next four days and we couldn’t stay here that long and finish the trip before we need to be back in the Cities so we moved on.

We passed “Squirrel Keepers Road”. Why? Is there a shortage of them? Do they need to be hoarded? If so, I’m glad it is someone else, not me, doing it.

Then we followed a stretch of Hwy 2, which we’d last traveled nearly a year ago much further west, this time on our way to Federal Dam, Minnesota, and the Leech Lake Recreation Area where we stopped for the night. We really like these Corps of Engineer parks.

TTYL,

Linda