Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Day 11 - Brainerd

Both Abe and I felt refreshed this morning after a much needed day off. We packed up camp and left our campsite around 9am. We said goodbye to the park ranger who had given us a ride in to town the day before so we could get Abe shoes. The day was cold and gloomy but once again the rain held off while we were portaging.

We were moving at a good clip and made 8 miles by lunch. As we passed numurous restaurants in Baxter, we couldn't help but take advantage of the endless bowl of breadsticks at Olive Garden. We parked our boat right out front and took a seat inside. As expected there were many questioning looks. The manager came up to us halfway through the meal and asked what the canoe was all about? We gave him the rundown and he was intrigued. At the end of our conversation he said he would comp our meal for us. He came back a couple minutes later and told us that somebody had overheard an earlier conversation we were having and had already paid for our meal! It sure is nice to have people lining up to pay for our meals!

We left the OG stuffed and content. We finished the day at Lum Park, 13 miles from where we started the day. Like many nights in this trip we weren't exactly sure where we were going to stay. As luck would have it we struck up a friendly chat with some nice college aged kids from Brainerd and within minutes one of them offered to let us camp on his grandparents land which was just across the lake from where we were. They left and we paddled over to the property. There were nice fire pits and mounds of wood to burn. Abe and I got a raging fire going to stay warm. Around 8 one of the kids we met (Vinnie) showed up to see how things were going. We ended up hanging out for a few hours and had a great time.

We are happy with all the people we are meeting on this trip. Hopefully the rainy weather will subside sometime tomorrow.

P.S. We are fairly confident that we located the worlds first bat egg today. We found it under a bat hole, and put 1 and 1 together to get 3 :)

Nothin' to it, but to do it.

2 comments: