loose change

29 august 2025 : ash river campground ➔ fargo, north dakota

checking in from big falls, minnesota! we’re on the golden road to fargo, north dakota. continental breakfast imminent. my plan is to retroactively document our time in voyageurs & finish the piece off from our hotel tonight, ending with the stats and songs of today. after a week of camping we are feeling generally elated if not a little stinky! we’ve benefitted greatly from the charm and wilderness of minnesota. this state rules. the northern territories of the midwest are really carrying the team on their backs, i feel. in the past three days we have done as much reading and resting as we have exploring, for all of which our bodies and minds are the better! the comprehensive update is as follows: 

25 august 2025 : rainbow falls ➔ ash river campground

no stats from this day but we did keep a fair share of records! beginning naturally with our musical menu: 

7/27/25 tweezemageddon phish @ SPAC

first two chapters of the prophet by kahlil gibran

dire straits – dire straits

no rain, no rose – john craigie

harvest moon – neil young

today began at rainbow falls after a surprisingly restful night of sleep, aided by wind and cold night air and no visit from our local bear(s). i woke up at about seven and headed out for a run, s stayed back to rest a little more and start packing things up. if rainbow falls wasn’t redeemed by such sound sleeping conditions, she proved herself with a gorgeous trail system leading to her titular water feature. i started out on the superior trail, running on mossy carpet & emerging onto pink bedrock granite to a view of the north shores of lake superior. the trail ducks back into boreal forest and spits you out right at the top of rainbow falls, near which there is a ten-storied staircase leading you past each section of the water fall, the water getting rowdier and stronger with each fall it descended. 

i was back to the campsite around 815a, at which point we took advantage of a beautifully maintained free shower with the perfect water pressure & warmth. sam cinched the canoe back down & we headed out, stopping to enjoy our muffins (a traditional sam and ryder camping delicacy) on the now sun-soaked rocks just next to the beginning of the falls. we wished we could let our drummond island neighbor know how much we enjoyed his recommendation! on the drive out we discovered that one could spend many days in and around rainbow falls provincial park & never tire of things to do. 

after a final traverse of the staircase we hit the road, obviously stopping at tim horton’s for one last time before we said goodbye to canada for real. sam got an iced PSL (pumpkin spice latte) and i completely balked at the register upon learning that they were out of espresso beans and couldn’t make an americano, let alone an iced americano. if i am ever ordering food and my order becomes obsolete or disrupted by one of the many ever-changing variables in the food industry, i panic just a little bit and order something completely uninteresting to me. in this case i ended up with a large hot black coffee and a small separate cup of ice. not catastrophic but certainly bungled! sam’s drink was very tasty & i poured the rest of my coffee and ice into his cup when he was done. 

on our drive through thunder bay, we passed a sign demarcating the arctic watershed–all streams from here flow north to the arctic ocean–which we were a bit fascinated by. we saw the smallest tiniest beaver crossing the road from one side of lake to the other. we made a joke about him being the federal dam inspector, which reminded me of this sign i never mentioned as we left michigan the other day: a plywood green billboard with white stenciled letters reading MY LAST NAME IS NOT DAMN   –   GOD. 

we crossed the border in international falls after stopping at walmart for a smaller cooler to bring into the backcountry. walmart is such a sacrilegious wasteland. it’s like the land of the lotus eaters. however, it yielded one singular item we needed, and we were in and out in under fifteen minutes. ten minutes after that we were at the border. i would implore anyone crossing from canada into minnesota to avoid this crossing at all costs for no reason other that it smelled like shit the second we laid tires into american pavement. maybe this is an unavoidable plight! but is well worth a try to avoid. after a brief and overwhelming half hour in urban territory we were back on a single lane road to voyageurs NP. 

i’d been feeling the most remote amount of anxiety about the unknowns of backcountry canoeing and so our car was silent for a little while as i tried to parse them out. i am learning that anxiety is largely just my body and mind in a desperate hunt for safety and security and control at any cost. i think because i have always taken these feelings at face value it is now harder to tell which ones of them are worth taking into consideration. these days i’m trying to set a boundary between myself and whatever little old scared part of me is (probably rightfully) trying to bring my attention to any perceived hazards, which in this case didn’t really have a shape or form because i had no idea what to expect of big water back country canoeing! i once lived with a person who told me she didn’t understand why i always liked to have expectations for things, or why i always needed to know what to expect. now i am hyperaware of my own ~expectancy~. 

anyway. just before voyageurs we stopped at the gateway general store for whisky and wood and ice. the liquor store and general store were in the same building but used different doors, so i paid for the wood and ice while sam got the whisky. ice cream should never be too far out of reach in moments of distress big or small and wouldn’t you believe it! the gateway general store had an ice cream counter. sam was surely not too surprised to see me walk out with a bag of ice in one hand and a single scoop of elephant tracks in the other. this wouldn’t be our last time at gateway general!

driving into voyageurs had me lamenting the demolition of the USNPS budget and benefits. it is such a stunningly maintained place in the middle of almost nowhere minnesota and i believe it would be either nonexistent or a wasteland of industry were it discovered under the current DOI. the visitors center and grounds were nothing short of beautiful and it’s wild to weigh the quality of the facilities against the fact that it’s the least visited national park in the states. kind of a chicken/egg situation. what’s even crazier is that there’s no fee to enter!

we stayed at the ash river campground eight minutes outside of the park. only two other sites out of nine were occupied at the time, and we secured the most remote one right near the river. we cracked a packing beer and spread out all of our gear on the picnic table to start loading our packs for an early departure the following morning! i made a box of mac and cheese & sam started the fire. after we demolished the mac and cheese sam brought out this bagged salad i forgot he’d gotten in canada – our local grocery stop in nipigon yielded some incredible food items (pictured below) and the flavor and texture of this bagged salad blew me away. a few mosquitos joined us as the sun was going down but by and large it was much less buggy than we’d been expecting. the weather continued to be on our side & we were in bed before nine. 

the bob l’eponge gummies were an absolute non-negotiable for me at the store. the french version of spongebob is objectively much much funnier than the english version and i’m such a sucker for a novelty snack. when i was a kid i remember begging my mom for the blues clues blue motts applesauce instead of the plain old organic one. i played it super cool when we walked by these gummies at first and then went back when sammy wasn’t looking and snuck them into the basket.

29 august 2025 11a : headwaters of the mississippi

i’ve taken a brief hiatus from writing our update to stop at the headwaters of the mississippi! quite an experience we’ve had here. ~headwaters of mississippi~ comes with this connotation of grandeur to me? i suppose i was expecting a remote and vast body of water rippling down into something resembling the mississippi and sam was expecting to take a plunge of sorts. pictured below is my rendition of the mississippi headwaters: expectation vs. reality using the 180º rule.

we were, in sam’s words, playfully overwhelmed by the demographic here. but it’s a neat thing to have seen. thank god we didn’t go too far out of the way to see this, sam said as we were pulling out of the park.

afterwards we stopped at the historic douglas lodge & had ourselves a real sweet lunch for the cost of forty one dollars – cheese curds, a bowl of chicken & wild rice soup (obligatory order after learning that northern minnesota is the wild rice capital of the country), & a grilled chicken sandwich. it’s beer friday so i had bemidji brewing’s IPA which was quite lovely, crystal clear & smooth. i learned from working at offset that a well-brewed beer should leave heady lines on the glass as it is drunk down, and this bemidji draft perfectly followed suit.

back on the road now so back to documentation of voyageurs day one!

26 august 2025 : ash river campground ➔ voyageurs backcountry

an early start (545a) to the day to ensure the calmest conditions possible for our voyage to jorgens lake via lake kabetogama. i will admit it was a theatrical wake up for me and not without complaint and plea for more rest but i arose nevertheless! it was a chilly morning & i didn’t take my vest off until we were 3.5 miles along on the big water canoe section. the (impressive) stats of this morning: 

miles driven to put-in: 4.4

miles canoed to eks bay dock: 5.1

hours spent canoeing: 2.5

motorboats passed on kabetogama: 6 (not a single fellow canoe)

miles trekked to campsite: 1.1

afternoon hours spent reading: 2.5

loons on jorgens lake: 2

number of holes blasted with tent stake to open canned butter chicken dinner: 7

bugs: not nearly as many as predicted

and while we listened to nary a tune on this day, here’s what was stuck in our heads: 

river runs deep – jj cale

i wrote mr. tambourine man – john craigie

passing through – leonard cohen

cassidy – grateful dead

just a dream – nelly

we had, as sam concisely put it, an immensely beautiful and solitary put-in at around 730 today. there was not a soul at the ash river visitor’s center or boat launch as we (sam) loaded up the canoe and said goodbye to serge for the next few days. sam was in the stern on the way out; we passed by plenty of unoccupied front country campsites and one with an irish flag waving proudly from the beach. a few yards behind the flag was a very fair child eagerly waving so sam threw back a “good morning irish!” to which we received a booming “TOP O THE MORNIN TO YA!” 

onward we paddled! making very swift time, we passed by a whole herd of ducks (and were deceived into thinking that they were baby loons until we passed them again on return and saw their goofy orange feet), the water stayed so calm with just a slight consistent ripple across the surface. we stopped maybe a half a mile short of the dock to have a seltzer and enjoy a developing tailwind that pushed us around the bend of eks bay. we passed a fishing group and exchanged good mornings and where ya froms. the guide seemed both disinterested & unimpressed when our answers were santa barbara and boston, himself and his guests being from somewhere in minnesota. we told him we were camping on jorgens lake. he replied by telling us we should go over and check out little shoepack lake, he’d camped there a few years ago. it’s full of “musky.” i was about to say “ewww” when sam saved me by saying “we’re not big into fishing!” musky is a fish. obviously. we weren’t really paddling, more so just drifting on by their boat and the talk was as small as possible and continuing past a tolerable level. we started paddling as he said did you pack your mosquito spray? yes sir we did! have a good one y’all!

we pulled up to the dock (which was less of a dock and more just a set of stairs ascending out of the shallow water), unloaded our backpacks & lifted donna up to shore just in the nick of time. shortly thereafter, a couple on a rented pontoon boat with two small day packs to their name took up the entirety of the stair-dock. we put our packs on as quickly as we could and headed onto the trail.

the paddle was so long & the hike was so short that neither of us expected much other than a flat trail across a wooded peninsula. boy were we wrong! voyageurs sits on the southern edge of the canadian shield, “a gigantic dome of volcanic bedrock that forms the core of the continent.” after erosion and glaciation, what’s left of the terrain is the oldest and toughest exposed igneous & metamorphic rock in the country. all of the exposed rock in the park, we learned, is precambrian, meaning it’s between 2.6 and 2.8 billion years old. the rock is splayed out in drastic slopes all across the surrounding peninsulas and proved to be a densely overgrown and intense trail, especially wearing flip flops (me) & crocs (sam). 

over a mile later, we reached our campsite & set up the tent & i promptly set up my mattress and sleeping bag and laid down. sam was in mode (this is what i’ve been calling it when he is diligently Taking Care Of Business [TCOB] and Making Our Lives Easier [MOLE]) and ryder was prone. by the time i resurfaced, his hammock was set up, our bear hang location was scouted, birch bark for the evening’s fire had been harvested, and our food had been organized. i hadn’t fully grasped our destination so sam had explained it to me on the way there. there is only one campsite on jorgens lake with one tin canoe provided for exploration of the lake. basically a rent-a-lake situation. we were promised a bear box but could not find one in sight, thus sam’s masterful bear hang. the pit toilet was maybe fifty yards from the site, a glorious throne at the end of a mossy path in a grove of birch and fir trees.

while we were sitting there taking in our home for the next two nights, i found myself with a million questions about our surroundings and a burning desire for answers. every time i am in nature i become the most curious person alive. how deep is this lake we’re on? where are all the bugs? what kind of forest is this? do you think they would have been logging on land that is this remote? do you think the ants are speaking to one another in a secret ant language? i feel that the entire population would benefit from this burgeoning curiosity that is evoked by being outside. 

in the early afternoon i took the avocado we’d brought which was perfectly mushy and whipped up a quick guac, which felt very luxurious considering our location. the rest of the afternoon played out nice and slowly with a beautiful cloud canvas for sunset. we had salami and laughing cow cheese later in the afternoon–this is a laughing cow camping debut and we’ve loved it so far for its creaminess and individual packaging–and then a good hearty stew for dinner.

here’s the abridged map of our day as per this setlist excerpt from sam’s journal: 

ALPINE START (canoe version)

PUT IN >

5 GLORIOUS MILES O’ PADDLIN’ (ft. duck family)

DEPARTING FROM DONNA >

SLOGFEST TO CAMP>

SAM IN MODE, RYDER PRONE

SIGGI’S PARFAIT

THE READING HOUR

HOMEMADE GUAC & CHILI LIME ROLLS

READING HOUR REPRISE

CHARCUTERIE > 

READING HOUR REPRISE

WOOD COLLECTION 

READING HOUR REPRISE

POKIN HOLES IN A DINNER CAN, PT. 1>

BUTTER CHICKEN & PILAF

TWIGHLIGHT PADDLE BEER >

FIRE BY THE LAKE >

BUG INVASION w/ bear hang jam

READING HOUR REPRISE >

SLEEP

27 august 2025 : jorgens lake, voyageurs np

a true day of indulgence in the name of rest and relaxation. the numbers:

hours slept: 10+

miles run: 2.1

books finished: 2 

bugs: more than yesterday 

times we sung the iconic hook of nelly’s just a dream: 11+

turtles seen: 3 (or the same guy three separate times)

swans seen: 1

swans heard: aplenty

number of holes blasted with new fancy

tent stake to open canned thai creamy chicken and rice dinner: 3!

we were expecting rain starting in the early morning so planned to stay in the tent late. the latter came true, the former didn’t arrive until we finally got up at around 10:45 after a few hours of waiting for the rain to come and when it finally did it was big slow drops, maybe a dozen every minute or so. we made another yogurt parfait for breakfast with the siggi’s we bought in canada. siggi’s is the only flavored yogurt i’ll buy because of how few ingredients there are. they don’t even classify it as yogurt, i think it’s skyr, which is maybe icelandic. regardless this was our first time bringing it on a camping trip and i think it was a smash hit!

after breakfast as the rain lazily hung around, we got back in the tent & did a crossword. sam fell back asleep and i laid down and started the poisonwood bible by barbara kingsolver. i’d brought two books on the trip because i had a premonition i would finish beach read by emily henry. sam brought just one, powderburn by jon krakauer, and when he finished it his only choice was to start beach read. needless to say he was not very enraptured. not one chapter after starting poisonwood bible was it clear to me that i’d be happy to spend the entire rest of the day buried in it! what a novel. 

however i was growing quite a bit restless and lonely next to sam who was so peacefully asleep so i woke him up so gently and we headed out for a trail run. sam set the pace and we ran toward little shoepack lake, which was allegedly about a mile west of us but these are longgg miles out here in voyageurs. not really a place for runners. the trail is densely thicketed and bony and the canopy makes the whole place feel quite insulated. i thought about being on the trails in madagascar and constantly scraping tiny leeches and other bugs off of my feet. it was fun watching sam’s bare feet dance over roots and stones to find the perfect landing spot. we passed over a tiny waterfall and turned around once we’d gone a mile out, heading back to jorgens for a dip and a late lunch. 

my friend laura and i spent a good bit of time talking this summer about this late onset fear of unknown bodies of water? jorgens lake was quite dark in color, as were most of the waters in voyagers. not a dark blue or green but a dark brown, which is somehow more disconcerting to me. i was quite trepidatious entering the water! the fear in the center of me felt like a fear of being crept up upon and swallowed whole, which is so irrational but feels so plausible in the moment. it was a real quick dip for me. 

it was still quite cloudy around lunchtime & we made instant ramen for lunch at around 3. sam bought me a lemon at the store which feels like such a luxury item on any camping trip but especially in the backcountry. i had a very simple ~chicken flavor~ flavor ramen with copious amounts of lemon on it and sam had kind of a spicy gochujang fancy ramen. ramen has to be up in my favorite camping meals because it checks so many boxes. the daily sodium value (ramen goes above and beyond here honestly i think it’s like 77%), the lack of dishes, the quickness of it all. 

by the mid afternoon it felt like the bugs were now privy to our existence at jorgens lake, not too many mosquitos but ugly black flies and swarms of little gnats demanding our constant attention. originally i felt like if i kept crushing them they’d eventually all be dead but to my dismay they just kept appearing. sam started a fire at around 430 and the sky had started to clear up; i read a little more of my book but we mostly just sat talking and twiddling our thumbs until the early evening when we took the canoe out again. 

jorgens lake was about a mile long and we paddled around maybe 35% of it, just a quick pre-dusk jaunt to evade the bugs at our campsite for a little while. we paddled past a sheer slope of granite rising thirty or forty feet out of the water. we filled our water bottles in the middle of the lake & paddled back in to start dinner, another rice & stew combination. the lake was cast in this gorgeous pink light reflecting off of thunderclouds far in the distance & we could see huge strikes of lightning every other minute, which kept us entertained for a little longer around the fire. the bear hang was up by about 815p and we were in the tent by 830. it was funny–in the morning i’d kind of lamented the lack of rain, i’d been craving a cozy morning and our systems were such that i had no concern about getting irrevocably wet. by the evening i was feeling thankful to have evaded the storm. we’d been so lucky with the weather thus far that this felt like a continuation of the skies in our favor. we were both probably asleep before 10p, aided by a gentle breeze and the consistent, angry hum of mosquitos outside the tent. 

today’s setlist, again excerpted from sam’s journal: 

LATE SLEEP > 

READING HOUR REPRISE >

BRUNCH PARFAIT w/ elements of ginger lemon tea

DRIZZLES FORCE BAND INTO TENT

NYT CROSSWORD >

NAP / READING HOUR REPRISE MASHUP >

TRAIL RUN

DIP IN JORGENS LAKE >

RAMEN LUNCH

READING HOUR REPRISE

BEER >

EARLY FIRE (BUG EVICTION JAM)

TWILIGHT PADDLE 

CREAMY THAI CHICKEN ’N JASMINE RICE

FINAL BEER > BEAR HANG JAM

READING HOUR REPRISE >

SLEEP

28 august 2025 : voyageurs backcountry ➔ ash river campground

wake up: 545a

on trail by: 703a

paddling by: 745a

sterning: ~me~

pace: 3.2mph

bald eagles seen on lake kabetogama: 4

put out: 915a

number of fried foods consumed posthaste: 8 (pickles, green beans, cheese curds,

mozz sticks, french fries, corn dogs, mini tacos, onion rings)

& music upon reunion with serge: 

first half of veneta 8/27/72 – grateful dead

again to ensure the most prime big water conditions, we planned to leave real early & were packed up by 645 in spite of my granted pleas to, again, snooze the alarm until 6a. those extra cozy fifteen minutes of rest were more than worth it and we eagerly began our hike back to donna. the mile out took a little under half an hour and was much more bearable now that we knew what to expect of the trail and now that i was wearing proper shoes, not just flip flops. our packs had been lightened by the food we’d zeroed at jorgens. 

the paddle back felt shorter and easier, too, and we passed no more than four motorboats on the lake. we faced a little headwind on the way in but nothing too difficult. we loaded serge up pretty haphazardly, planning to do a more thorough unpack at the ash river campsite. for now our sights were set on the ash river visitors center, where we poked around the ninety year old building & learned a little more about the geology & background of voyageurs. then we walked down a little trail to a small peninsula and shared a beer and the last muffin. the NPS sign was in such a pristine location that we obviously took a picture in front of it and remarked that this is probably the only NPS landmark sign we’ve ever taken a picture in front of. usually we’re driving right by the signs and all the people pulled off to the roadside, lining up for photo ops.

as an aside: i don’t have much concise or adequate to say about this, but it was quite the american experience to come back into cell service and read about a mass shooting on the first day of school just three hundred miles south of us. jarring news to say the least. the families and schoolteachers impacted have certainly remained on my mind.

after our visitor’s center sojourn we headed back to ash river campground, which was much more populous than it had been on tuesday. nearly every site was occupied so we wound up across the grounds from our original campsite but still removed from all of the minnesota-plated rvs. definitely more energy in the place as we got closer to labor day weekend. we set up the tent and unpacked our packs and headed to the ashkanam bar & grill a mile down the road. they opened at 11a and we showed up at about 1103 with real big appetites. our server was a local gal with a real smooth minnesotan accent. i started with a local ale, surly brewing co’s furious ipa, and sam got a draft kona. immediately we decided to order a combo basket (see stats above) & sam got a basket of mini corn dogs. i tried my first corn dog ever and was intrigued by it but a little dubious on whether i’d enjoy a full sized corn dog or not. i got a quarter pound cheeseburger and followed up with another round from another local brewery, lake of the woods’ channel marker lager. 

when she brought out our burgers, sam asked our server if they stayed open year round. her eyes got a little wide and she said oh yah, winter is about ten times busier up here than summer for us. it’s the snowmobiling capital of minnesota; presidents day weekend there’s people lined up for beer at the bar three rows deep! you’re just hoping to get snow early to lay down a good base so winter season can get underway. while we ate on the patio, she stepped outside for a cigarette as other locals stopped by to say hi to her. we got a real feel for small town northern minnesota and frankly loved every minute of it. sam especially became enamored with the place, the amount of fried food, the quality of the fried food, the reverence for winter and the changing of the seasons, the thick midwestern accents. there were as many golf carts and atvs on the single lane road as there were trucks and cars. it was fun to feel the place ramping up into the holiday weekend and to get a taste of the friendliness that pervades the midwest. 

after we finished a long leisurely meal and settled up, we headed back to gateway general to restock wood and ice and continue the indulgence train with another scoop of ice cream. gateway general hosts the walleye challenge, which is: finish a gallon [eight big scoops] of ice cream in under twenty minutes and receive the walleye t-shirt. if you don’t finish, you gotta pay twenty bucks for the ice cream. i swear i could have done it if i hadn’t just eaten my weight in fry batter. the 2025 record thus far is six out of twenty nine successful completions. if you complete it, they snap your polaroid in the shirt, write the stats on the bottom, and tape it to the ice cream counter for all to admire. the fastest time this year was 13:09, to which the cashier remarked: you shoulda seen him. it was legendary! a woman behind us was quite impressed with the challenge. they don’t even sell the shirt, she remarked in kind of an agape whisper. 

for dinner, we sourced from the general store what would soon lay claim as The Best Sausage I Have Ever Had In My Life. more details on these to follow!

we brought our ice cream back to the campsite for reading hour reprise, in which i finally succumbed to an afternoon nap. i am admittedly pretty anti-nap. i am very afraid of both a) the idea that i am shirking away useful hours of daylight during which i could be contributing productively to the world, and b) the feeling that if i sleep now then i’ll be wracked with alertness into the wee hours of the morning, unable to rest because i’ve destroyed my circadian rhythms by napping during the day. i’m also admittedly not a power-napper, which probably exacerbates my fear of naps. but on this day…after two beers and a meal of midwestern proportions and such a hearty dose of ice cream, my defenses were weak. the headline in sam’s journal is as follows: MOSBY WAVES WHITE FLAG, ENDS DECADES-LONG CRUSADE AGAINST DAYTIME SLEEP. i moved my sleeping pad out of the tent into the shade near sam’s hammock and tried valiantly to read the poisonwood bible but the words were blurring in and out and i just could not stay awake!

two hours (!) later after plenty of lucid afternoon dreams and overheard sports commentary from sam’s red sox game, i was roused by mosquitos and instantly arose to put on bug spray and thicker clothing. i grabbed a seltzer water out of the cooler and sam started an early fire again–the bugs at this point were some of the worst of our stint in minnesota, which is not saying too much honestly. the bugs were never as unbearable as we’d been prepared for. 

by six or so we really weren’t hungry at all but we’d purchased these intriguing sausages at gateway general, prime rib and horseradish cheese bangers. we rode out the evening a little longer, reflecting on the day and our time in voyageurs in general and by seven thirty sam decided to fire up the first sausage on the grill. within three minutes he flipped it, revealing the most beautiful charred casing…four minutes after that it was off the grill and he cut it in half to cool, releasing the tastiest juices. i’m literally not even being dramatic with the superlatives in reference to these sausages. they were locally single-batched in bemidji by stittsworth meats. i had one bite of sam’s and knew i needed more so we put a second sausage on for me. by the time i was biting into it, we had a third sausage on the grill and by the time we’d finished that one it was all too obvious the fourth link didn’t stand a chance. we polished these things off like we hadn’t eaten in a day. to be completely and unabashedly honest, i went to sleep thinking about how tasty these sausages were. 

we’d been sitting around the fire earlier when more neighbors pulled into the campsite. all in all, probably four or five rvs and trailers pulled through the circle in search of a place to park their rig for the holiday weekend, and almost all of them pulled right out. in came a truck towing a big red and white boat on the back, an older couple from orr, mn, we came to find out. sam lifted a beer to them after they’d parked the boat. they had two little rat shaped dogs running around their feet.

the husband came over to our fire pit afterwards, cigarette dangling loosely in his mouth. where’d you folks come from? he was keeled over in front of serge trying to read the plate. maine, we all said at the same time. we gabbed for a little while sam and i were drooling over the third sausage on the grill. he was born and raised in orr, which was about 40mi south of voyageurs. comes up here all the time. broke his back a few years ago snowmobiling, so now he just comes up in the summertime.

from sam’s northeasterly perspective, it was a bit of a strange thing to just stroll over to a stranger’s campsite with no aim but to chat. i don’t think i thought much of it, although i wouldn’t have done it myself. most of the folks we let in on our big cross continental trip are quite impressed and curious about where we’ve been and what’s to come. he introduced himself at the end as jack and welcomed us over to his campsite later that night for beers, probably not expecting us to be in our sleeping bags as early as we were.

not long after that we put ourselves to bed and i stayed up as long as i possibly could to digest as much of my book as i could bear before drifting off. our last night in the tent for a night or two!

29 august 2025 : headwaters ➔ fargo

wrapping up with our final stats of today:

miles driven: 431

loads of laundry completed: 1

sports games watched by sam in simulcast: 2

novelty graphic t-shirts like “i paused my video game to be here” seen during our

stop at the headwaters: hundreds

and today as told by the car stereo:

second half of veneta 8/27/72 – the grateful dead

sam’s jv road playlist

phone call to sam’s parents

i wrote mr. tambourine man – john craigie

phone call with jeremy

various songs by leonard cohen

a largely uneventful day on the road! when we got to fargo we stopped at a coin-op and i put in a load of our stinkiest clothes in preparation for the colorado stint. our highlights from the road today included driving by the HEADQUARTERS and SMOKEHOUSE of the notorious STITTSWORTH MEATS just outside bemidji minnesota! a close second was a sign outside of a gas station in bemidji that said HUSBAND DAYCARE with a six pack of bud light on it.

i was waiting in line to check in to the hotel behind an elder couple who had printed out various small requests on paper, the husband taking a charmingly quintessential old fashioned amount of time to complete the check in process. the wife quite promptly came up to me and pointed out to serge in the parking lot. what are you guys doing HERE?! she asked. i briefly explained our voyage. best to do all of that when you’re young, she said. good for the two of you. she and her husband were in fargo from south dakota to watch their granddaughter play volleyball. her husband had always coached basketball, but their daughter-in-law played volleyball in college, and it turns out it’s quite a fun and fast-paced sport to watch! i guess we were so immersed in conversation by the time sam came in that he’d originally thought she was some woman i’d known since childhood and just happened to be at this hotel.

i ran on the treadmill for half an hour and drove to change our laundry over, eyebrow-deep in the poisonwood bible for most of the time between. we’re finishing out the night with the buffs game on tv and the red sox game on sam’s computer and the summer i turned pretty on my computer and takeout panera for dinner. tomorrow we drive as far as we can on the road to ‘rado! this was quite the behemoth of the update and i hope you’ve enjoyed at least the pictures! until i write again ttyl thank you as always for spending some of your time with us today! xxo