Today is Tuesday August 2. At midday I’m sitting in a gazebo charging my phone next to the Mississippi River while a man of retirement age plays banjo. Is this real life?
Bob (the banjo player) is a local, though many people at this Pokegama dam campground are just passing through in their RVs. Bob, a veteran, was married a couple decades ago just a few feet a away from this spot, under a tree that still stands.
As far as paid campsites go this place is great; clean showers, electrical hookups, and water at the sites.
I only had to travel about a mile to get here today. I had “stealth” camped in the woods the night before simply because I ran out of day light. “Stealth camping” refers to camping somewhere you’re not supposed to be camping.
The dam and campground is right on US-2, between Cohasset and Grand Rapids. With a safe place to keep my kayak for a couple days (the campground), I headed to Grand Rapids to take a couple nights of rest at the Forest Lake Motel.
Before that though I grabbed a small pizza at LMNO which was just a half mile in the opposite direction towards Cohasset.
The next day I had pizza again at Sammy’s in Grand Rapids and spotted the most dreaded menu item of all, Minnesota Wild Rice! (For those that didn’t read about my journey across Rice Lake, I still wince a bit thinking about the wild rice obstructions I went through on Day 3).
I was hoping to get some of my videos up on YouTube during this time off but it’ll have to wait for another rest day. For those that want to see current video footage check out my TikTok. I have a fairly comprehensive video summary of my trip so far: