Big Bog State Recreation Area

Hi Everyone!  Tonight I have some photos for you from another day trip :)  My friend Grace and I took a drive up to Big Bog, about 60 miles North of Bemidji, MN on Upper Red Lake.  We'd never been here before so it was fun to see something new!

Our first stop was the Visitor Center.  They had this cool ariel view map on the floor.

It was a fairly small visitor center, but they had quite a few taxidermy animal displays.

Fire Tower

Looking down at the vistor center

Red Lake

 

Then we drove a few miles up the road to where you actually walk in to the bog.

We sat in the shade and enjoyed our picnic lunch overlooking this pretty little late.  The deer flies were a bit of a nuisance!

Entering the bog!

The boardwalk was 1 mile long

Pitcher Plant!

The carnivorous pitcher plant

This blossom grows up above the pitcher on the ground.

It said that moose can sometimes be sighted in the area, we didn't see any though :(

We had a lovely time wading around in the water, you could walk a long ways out and it stayed shallow.  The water actually looked red!

Despite it being a hot day, we made the most of it and still enjoyed exploring and just spending the day together! 

Mini Camping Trip

Hi all!  It has been awhile since I've had anything to post about here.  As the title of this blog says "Minnesota and Beyond", today my story comes from Minnesota.  Not all adventures have to take place far away from where you live!
 

Our destination was Gulch Lake Campground in the Paul Bunyan State Forest.

This is a state forest campground that is maintained by Lake Bemidji State Park.

 

We saw a couple turtles digging holes for their eggs in a campsite.

Time to get the tent set up!

My camping partner -  my lovely mother :)

 

Tent caterpillar :p

Prior to this photo of roasting hot dogs, we had the alarming realization that we had left our cooler at home 😝  Good thing this was a mini camping trip and we were only 14.5 miles from home 😂

 

The long awaited supper 😂

After supper we walked down to Lake Nelson and enjoyed the beautiful calm evening.

My mom wanted her picture on this rock 😊

Looking over to Lake 21

Lake 21

We hiked back to our campsite and relaxed the rest of the evening by the fire enjoying listening to the sounds of the woods (see video below).  We knew that some rain was in the forecast for later the next morning, so we monitored that and ended up getting up at 7:30, packing up the tent, and heading home.  It was good timing because not too long after we got back it started to thunderstorm!

Even though it was a short outing we had a fun time and it just goes to show that it doesn't have to be something big and elaborate to create memories that will last a lifetime.