My Semi True Story: Lake Itasca and Yet Another Discussion on My Boneheadedness

As I was scrolling through the vacation pictures (all 1500 of them) to pull out for today's post, I realized that I made a mistake on yesterday's post.

50 (meaningless) points if you caught the fact that I was wearing two different shirts. I had on a lovely red tie-dye tshirt in my "I Snagged A Giant Stick Photo". Then, in my "Holding a Fish" and subsequent "Freaking Out" photo, I'm wearing last year's Old Navy 4th of July shirt.

Phooey.

I feel like I've let you guys down because you've come to appreciate my high level of accuracy and the unflinchingly rigid set of reporting standards that I've imposed on myself. I apologize and thanks for the slack, Jack. I will do better next time.

Today's post will contain photos from our day trip to Itasca State Park, the obligatory sunset photo, and surprise photo if you are good.

Quick nature lesson: Itasca State Park is giant - over 32,000 acres and it contains (get this) more than 100 lakes, which is approximately 31,998 acres and 100 lakes more than I currently possess.

Some areas have never been logged and they contain trees that are a few hundred years old.

This factoid really wowed my husband, the incredibly gifted woodworker.

This factoid didn't really wow the rest of the family, but I can appreciate old stuff. Especially if the old stuff in the room isn't a reference to me.

Because I'm a creative visionary, I call this photo "Big Tall Trees".

The old trees were pretty cool, but Itasca's big woo is that it contains the headwaters of the Mississippi River. You see, Lake Itasca is spring fed and the overflow is the start of the river.

There is a bridge in which you can walk across the Mississippi.

The more adventurous can wade across ...

… or walk across the aptly named river rocks.

Or you can do all three while one slightly jiggly pale Hoosier lady snaps 218 photos.

Since we spent most of the day at Itasca, we didn't really have much time to spend in the boat. Our interesting boat conversations were at a minimum. However, my husband and I did have an interesting conversation while in the car.

We were debating the wisdom of me loading old Ernest P. Worrell movies on to the girls' iPods for them to watch on the long drive to Minnesota. Debating might be too strong of a word.

You do remember Ernest, right?

I knew I screwed up.

I found a DVD containing three Ernest movies for five bucks in a bin at the store before we left on our trip. I realize that I should have been leery of any DVD containing any three movies for five bucks, but I hadn't had any Cheetos in over a month and I wasn't thinking clearly.

Or at all.

It was an impulse buy that would haunt me every time someone pulled a fish out of the water, had to bait her own hook, or walked by the fish cleaning station because one of the children would yell out an Ernest ehhhwwww! with startling mimicry.

Sometimes my boneheadedness is more apparent than others.

Sigh.

Let's just roll that beautiful sunset footage.