Chapter 3: Lake Itasca to Bemidji

The Upper Mississippi is incredible!

We started paddling the next morning from Wanagan campground through a canoeist’s paradise.

The scenery ranged from pine forests that infused the air with a sweet, pine woods smell, to marshes full of cattails with stalks higher than our heads. The wetlands were full of waterfowl.  It seemed at every bend there was a mother duck thrashing on the water surface and acting crippled to lure us away from her nest.
Walleyes, northern pike and sauger swim in the northern stretches of the river. Crappies, plump bluegills, largemouth bass and bullheads are in the backwater lakes and sloughs. Channel catfish are found virtually everywhere, and the white bass fisheries can explode at times. 
To read the rest of this chapter, click on Itasca to Bemidji.

Chapter 2: Preparation and Heading out

The mighty Mississippi doesn't look like much initially!

Among the questions people always asked were some about my background. Many assumed I was a professional adventurer of some sort, and that canoeing the Mississippi was just one in a series of  expeditions.

Actually, I am so ordinary as to be boring. Here is a little about me, how the trip got started, and the story of the first day on the river.
To read chapter 2, click where the Mississippi River canoe trip all started.