Coming back
Today we left the Hudson Bay watershed and came back to the Mississippi River watershed. Because we were not on a rail trail, we got to cross the continental divide on a proper hill.
We saw some pelicans today. Like many other visitors to Minnesota, they come for the fishing. In Florida, we always see pelicans hunting in pace lines, soaring inches above the waves as they travel up and down the shore line. In Minnesota, they seem to hunt individually. We did see one group catching some thermals together, but they were not near a lake (not easy to do in Minnesota).
We visited an unusual museum. It was really just a collection of family memorabilia that goes back over 150 years. The family story begins with 2 brothers from Illinois who join the Union army. They traveled together by road, train and steamboat to Tennessee. Before they encountered any fighting, both contracted typhoid. One brother died of typhoid, the other was hospitalized for weeks before he recovered.
The surviving brother went on to the battle of Chickamauga, where he was shot through the shoulder. He lived through 3 years of war, including being shot through the other shoulder, before he came back home to Illinois. He moved to Battle Lake Minnesota and started the Minnesota family that lead to the museum.
I don't want to use the pejorative term horders, but it appears the family never disposed of useful, and perhaps not so useful items. Some items have a lot of historical value, like the collection of civil war letters.
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We stopped for lunch in the town of Henning. The lunch was memorable for the excellent wild rice soup, and because we arrived just before a cloudburst. We stayed dry inside the restaurant, although our bikes got a bit wet. The rain was gone before we finished our food. Our official rainy day count remains at 3 days.
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