May 26, 2019
Casual Sunday
My throat became raw as the night progressed and in the morning I could hardly swallow. We extended our stay for one night so I could rest and be ready to ride into one of Minnesota’s many lake resorts Memorial Day. I gargled with salt water and drank tea and Gatorade nonstop.
Motel rooms are dreary, so not even a bad cold could keep me in. In the afternoon, we got on the bikes and rode along Lake Bemidji, which is the Ojibwe word that means “with crossing waters.” Those crossing waters are the Mississippi, another Ojibwe word that means “great river.” The Mississippi flows west to east through Lake Bemidji and on down south.
A statue along the lake trail honors Shaynowishkung, a respected Ojibwe elder, who lived in this area in the 1880s when white settlers moved in. After the Great Northern railroad surveyed tracks through his property, Shaynowishkung and his village were moved to a reservation near Cass Lake, and three years later he and his people were forced off to make way for the Crookston Lumber mill. When he died of pneumonia in 1904, his funeral was one of the most impressive events of the city at the time. He lay in state at city hall and the city council and civic groups walked in procession to the Greenwood cemetery where he was buried with high honors as a Bemidji pioneer. What if his desire to keep the peace with the white settlers had been rewarded with the railroad skirting his property or the lumber mill building someplace else other than on his second allotment?
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The lake trail curves around to another monument, the statues of the lumberjack Paul Bunyan and his blue ox Babe, on the National Register of Historic Places since 1988. From a prominent location on Highway 197, Paul and Babe attract attention from cars driving by. In the days of cameras before camera phones, the Kodak camera and film company said Paul and Babe were the second most photographed statues in the United States, after Mount Rushmore. That might be a tall tale, but the statue is a symbol of the town.
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We stopped by the Bemidji brewery for a Red X ale and root beer (no club soda). I was fading in the stretch, so we made a last stop at Walmart for Gatorade powder and cheap munchies for the road. We went back to the room to rest up for the next day.
Today's ride: 7 miles (11 km)
Total: 1,007 miles (1,621 km)
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4 years ago