Day 7 7/12

Woke up with the ritual of granola and yogurt, and headed out for a run of the park while Mike hiked the hiking club trail. Lake Bronson is a really cool park. Very different ecosystem than anything else in the aspen parkland. It's mixed with Oak Savanna, so it kind of looks like Wild River here and there, but then there's a huge grove of Aspens making it seem like the arrowhead. Lots of trails here too. I bet I only hit half or less in my 10 mile run around the park. The river/reservoir is the center of the park and captures a lot of great views. I only incidentally bird as a general rule, usually while running or hiking, but this would be an awesome spot to hit up and spend a bunch of time with binocs. It's far enough away from the cities that you're really starting to hit a different set of birds, and a lot of mixed types with the combination of prairie, but also far north and some pines. I think if you went at a time when the mosquitoes had calmed, this might inch it's way towards a top 10 park for me.

We got on the road around 11 and headed to Old Mill State park next; the last in the northwest corner that we had to get to. I didn't have high hopes and while it wasn't awful, it wasn't one to gush about. I did the hiking club with mike, which was nice enough, but there were only maybe 4 miles of trails total. Kinda cool to see the old mill (we did our lunch there), but that's about it.

Far NW MN is like a weird mix of landscapes from other parts of the state. (Or - maybe from their point of view, our landscapes are missing key features?). It looks like Montevideo for a while, then there's an alder swamp, followed by a grove of Aspen, and then some Pines and Spruce before more farm fields pop up again. The trees look to be more than wind breaks between fields as well. It's not the never ending expanse of highway 90 or 7 heading west in central or southern MN.

Towns were more frequent than the Warroad to Hallock stretch (or little fork region, for that matter), but they were still really small and pretty rough looking. Thief River was a pretty good exception. The downtown was absolutely outstanding. Way bigger than I imagined. It's smaller than St. Peter, but the downtown might have been as big as Mankato's. South of Thief River, it's solidly transitioned into farm country that looks pretty much like the rest of 59 does...which stretches all the way down through Montevideo, and then the Iowa border.

Somewhere north or Detroit Lakes, hills start coming into the picture, and then more rolling deciduous trees again. And then all of a sudden, it's cabin country and it feels like you're back in civilization. Mike referenced that we were back into the sphere of the cities, but then after looking at the map, realized we were way the heck up there still.

Wove down 10 to Perham (also an outstanding main street) and sipped a beer at Disgruntled brewing. I had had their crowlers before and loved their beer. There brewery is a little out of town, but it was right up against a pine grove and was a nice stop.

It was only 30ish minutes to Glendelough from there; our 7th state park (8 if you count Big Bog rec area)

We snaked the last canoe-in site, which was only a 10-min paddle across the lake from the landing. It was definitely the closest company we'd had all trip. We had a couple other canoe in sites within ear shot, but it certainly was still pretty spread out. Kind of ironic that it was closer packed than the International Falls municipal campground with only one other camper at we didn't hear from at all.

Had on last awesome camp dinner of pasta and savored the sunset over another day of camping (our 6th) and swimming (at least 6).

The "old" mill itself