17-19 August: We dipped south of the border to central Minnesota and paid a visit to Jack, Kyle’s grandfather (Corwyn’s great grandfather). In his early 90s and a widower since 2004, Jack lives by himself on the farm where he was born and later he and his wife Alice raised three sons. He introduced us to some of his friends and neighbors as they gathered for coffee in the tiny nearby village of Nimrod. On the way home we stopped by a neighbor’s to pick some sweet corn for supper, and then Jack showed us around his garden, where we picked about a half dozen huge but still tender zucchini, and his back fields, which are rented out now that Jack has retired from dairy farming. He told us a bit about the old days while Amy cooked stuffed zucchini to go with the corn, and we generally had a great visit with our genial and humble host.
The next day we hadn’t scheduled any specific activities and didn’t have campground reservations, so we just headed out to see what we could find. We passed through the busy tourist town of Walker and kept going north until we found a nice Forest Service campground on a lake with a bike trail around it. We had a pleasant ride on the Mi-Gi-Zi bike trail around Pike Bay, followed by a swim in its clear water. In the morning, after chatting a while with the couple camped across from us, we headed for Wisconsin.