voyageurs national park

We just got back from a great camping trip at Voyageurs National Park in Northern Minnesota, walking distance from Canada (if you could walk on water.) This was the first time we'd been there, which is rediculous, since it's only 7 hours away. It's beautiful! And it's a nice escape from the Iowa humidity.

Our whole trip, though, was almost completely ruined by a leech-fest. We knew there were some creepy long things, but we didn't know the damage they could do. After Lila was very brave, picking some out of the water on sticks, she was first to be 'attacked'. After boating out to an island and eating bagels and bing cherries, I told Lila to 'hold still for a second' and within that one second she was jumping around hysterically trying to shake it off. It was a bloody mess! The leech on her ankle was about 4 inches long, and fat and juicy with her blood (and did you know they inject an anti-coagulant so you'll bleed profusely?) She couldn't calm down. Berrett was on the other side of the island, so I was yelling for him to come back because I couldn't hold her and get the lovely leech off. I tried grabbing it and using a stick to scrape it off, but she wasn't still enough for me to be sucessful. Finally, Berrett saved the day. I held her leg and he pulled it off. We checked everyone else and found a big bloody one between Adam's toes, inside his shoe and another tiny one trying to slither into Lila's big toenail. (As a side note, you probably know that feet really give me the willies anyway, but that tiny leech trying to get into Lila's toenail actually woke me up that night and completely freaked me out! I was picturing tiny creepy things in my toenails all night and could barely sleep!!) Davis had about 5 tiny ones on his feet, but none of them were bloody or difficult to get off. Leeches are so fun to talk about that I'm almost ignoring the rest of our trip!

The third day there was the very best. We went to the east side of the National Park and the lake, which runs east and west, and we took our canoe out to several little islands. We ended up on a perfect little island all alone, where we spent the rest of the day. We found wild blueberries everywhere, ate bagels, dried cherries on chocolate bars(that's my new thing), saw lots of cool things, and had fun. It was perfect.

So, day one, 1/2 of day two, day three, and day four were great!! But, that little 1/2 of day two was a big deal and loomed over the rest of the trip. Isn't that how it goes?

DAY 1


DAY 2



Before we knew:

After:

Pelican-covered rock:


DAY 3
Me pretending to through a rock;
Adam pretending to be interested:



Geeks: