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The Headwaters

25 Oct 2009 09:17:03 pm

We made a fun trip on Saturday down to Itasca State Park. Itasca State Park is better known as the headwaters of the Mississippi. It is where our nation’s mightiest river starts its journey to the gulf. Really pretty cool, to think about. Literally no bigger than a small stream. You can, and I did, walk across the river on a small rock damn that stretches across the 15 foot wide stream. Itasca also has the nation’s oldest red pine (tied with one in Michigan) and one of the nation’s oldest white pines both estimated at over 300 years old. The red pine was struck by lightning so it is missing some of its top. But both of these trees are really impressive. It is hard to comprehend the birthdays of both of these trees back in the 1700’s. We also got to climb the Itasca fire tower and check out the park from 100 feet off the ground. All and all it was pretty fun even though we had to dodge some rain showers. I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.
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Here’s a funny one, one of the first spots we stopped to look out over Lake Itasca we noticed two pine squirrels running around. These squirrels usually get pretty close and aren’t afraid of humans. This one zoomed by us using the railing on our outlook platform as a runway. The picture is terrible, but it does capture the speed that these fur balls can obtain. SQUIRREL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!