Roaming Through Retirement




June--All about Minnesota Minnesota in June has been our go-to-place since retiring in 2007.  This is where we get our annual health care physicals done and is home to more relatives than our native North Dakota.  It is also home to a national park.

Our first outing in Minnesota was a pizza farm about an hour south of Denise's home. Chase and Clara each brought a friend with to enjoy the evening	Chris Holm was a one-piece band who not only had a great voice, but played a guitar, drums and a harmonica.
Minnesota is also home to lots of friends we made over the years, including Rich and Nancy Pointer who make Florida their residence but have children in MN.	Sports are a major part of our lives when we come to MN, because Clara and Chase are so active. Here Clara came in second in the 4x100 relay.
We caught up with Tim and Nancy and daughter Olivia who live near St. Paul.  Both work from home and love it. Olivia has been attending Winona State.	In addition to gaming and sports, Chase can also bake.  He sported this pound cake while spending time with us at our RV.
Chase (second from the right) enjoys flag football and especially when his friends show up to play. They had a 500 season this summer.	Clara is pitching slow ball softball, but also plays shortstop and center.  Here they played a double header, where they won one and lost one.
Gary and Kaye are Minnesota friends we met in Ajijic.  Like us, they sequestered in their home during the first peak of COVID and here we are sharing our mutual experiences.	We spent a day near our home in St Cloud and got caught up with neighbors and friends. We met Jerry and Mary at a RV rally in Oregon ten years ago and learned that Mary grew up in the area.
This photo is the front entry to the home we live in on Lake Watab. It and the rest of the neighborhood has changed allot.	We bought this original painting of Lake Watab in 1994 and sold it to Curt Cotton (on the right) whom we purchased our home from in 1992.  The last of what we had stored at Denise's place.  Small world!!
Our big adventure was a one week RV road trip with Denise, Clara and Chase to northern Minnesota. Our first stop was the Vince Shute Wildlife Sanctuary.	This sanctuary is made up of over 500 acres and home to one of the largest concentrations of black bears.  MN is home to an estimated 15,000 bears.
The sanctuary has an elevated platform to view black bear who come to chow down on free food.	Our primary destination was Voyageur National Park, which is part of the boundary waters between Minnesota and Canada.
The Park is made up of 218,000 acres, 40 percent of which is water.  The park has 90 islands and 655 miles of shorelines.	The Park was established in 1975, which means people had to give up their homes and property.  We visited this one home that used this root cellar as their refrigerator.
This is one of several Bald Eagles we saw on a sunset cruise of the lake.   Thanks to their placement on the Endangered  Species List in 1967, these beautiful creatures have rebounded in population.	The cruise took us to Kettle Falls, a historic hang out for fisherman, miners and lumberman. Today it is mainly a tourist attraction. We caught this picture with the kids with Canada in the background.
We caught this awesome view of the sunset on the way back to the campground.  The massive lakes could not have been calmer.	The Park has three visitors center that have miles of hiking trails and overlooks we took advantage of. Surprisingly the mosquitos were not bad.
The trails were well marked but primitive.  We were hoping to see some moose and bear, but the closest we got were a couple of flickertails.	The campground doubled as a marina with access to the boundary waters.  Here, Clara and Chase are exploring the bay in this paddle boat.
Our new RV is much smaller but handled the five of us OK.  We used the patio as our living and dining room.	One of the visitors' centers exhibited this full-size moose and Larry took advantage of retelling stories of when his nick name was 'little moose'.
Denise found this turtle along one of our hikes, which posed for this picture then went back into the wild.	S'mores and RVing are synonymous.  Thanks to Chase's boy scout skills, we used this awesome fire.
We rented two canoes and did what most park visitors do--explore the boundary waters.	In all, we explored three islands by canoe. We brought a picnic lunch as all of these islands were uninhabited.
Remnants of old structures still exist, including a mini gold mine that operated in the 1890s.	The trip back to the visitors' center was successful, despite a strong head wind.  All a part of the adventure.
With both Clara and Chase playing ice hockey, a must stop was the United States Hall of Fame in Eveleth.	The stop was better than expected. It highlighted both the history of hockey and many of its great players.
Eveleth was the heart of one of the nation's largest iron ore operations that peaked in the 1940s.  Here is an example of reclamation work done to beautify the area.	After the kids went back home, we spent a couple of nights in Duluth and took in the excitement of the 45th running of the Grandma's Marathon. We, of course, were spectators.
The Grandma's Marathon concluded with an all-day concert, food and refreshments for participants and their fans.	June is a special month for us, as Clara celebrated her birthday on the first day of summer.  This year she turned 15. Happy Birthday Clara!!

June's web page includes June 1 through June 31.