Because of the floods our trip to Itasca became one day instead of two and we had to drive south from Willow River to get around the closed roads and bridges to find a route we could use to go west. This took us around Lake Mille Lacs, over to Brainerd, then up to Walker and on to Itasca. There I received the first Lifetime Achievement Award from the Minnesota Association of Environmental Education (MAEE). This was an amazing honor and wonderful recognition from my peers. The event was held at the Mary Gibbs Center in Itasca State Park - the headwaters of the Mississippi River and an important part of our 2013 expedition. Lake Itasca is shaped like a slingshot and the river drains out of the north end over a series of slippery stepping stones. It is hard to envision the small stream that exits the lake to be the same river as the industrial waterway we saw near New Orleans. The Mississippi starts in the true north - land of red and white pines and Minnesota...
Written by Kate, photography by Mike Anyone who has been to Grand Marais, MN over the years probably drove past The Pie Place, but missed seeing it. Set back from Highway 61 it was a small, one story, white clapboard building, with an enclosed front porch. Inside it had the character of an old 1940s café, but the food was always tasty and the namesake pies outstanding. Last May, The Pie Place moved into town to a much better location. It is now easily found on Main Street, right across from the beautiful harbor. It succeeds a number of other restaurants at this location and we hope it will be successful and have a long run in this new spot. It has become our favorite place to eat in town, and that’s saying something, since Grand Marais has an unusually good selection of eating establishments for a town its size. We ate there in August when our friends Mark and Jeannie Sandbo suggested it as a good lunch spot. Karen Halberschleb...
By Kate Crowley As soon as I saw the kookaburra, the song started playing in my head, “Kookaburra lives in the old gum tree, merry, merry old……” I don’t know how often I sang that song in school or at Campfire Girl gatherings, but I never could have imagined as a child that one day I’d see the real live bird in the wild. This kookaburra however was not sitting in a gum tree. It was perched on a wire alongside a road on the North Island of New Zealand. The kookaburra is a native of Australia and was introduced like so many others here. New Zealand, having been separated from Australia for millions of years had its own unique flora and fauna. But as soon as people arrived, the composition began to change. Native birds were killed off – the Moas (there were nine species) being the most famous. These birds were bigger than the ostrich (12ft) and had hair-like feathers and no vestigial wings. Its big size and unfamilarity with a predator as efficient a...
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