Boy. oh boy, was it cold this morning!  A icy, cutting wind that never really died down even though the dark clouds dispersed and we got sun and cloud in the afternoon.

We were going to try see three things in Minnesota on our way west, but only found the first one, which was the Pokegama Dam just west of Grand Rapids.  It is a little dam, but it is on the Mississippi River and 6 miles or so west of Bemidji (60 miles west of Grand Rapids) we passed a marker for the headwaters of the Mississippi – that is one long river!

The other thing we lost today were the trees on both sides of the road.  At McIntosh, 50 miles west of Bemidji we arrived in the prairie.  Wide open sky and fields on both sides.

The main crop we passed, which was being harvested everywhere, were sugar beets.  We had many loaded trucks go by us on the road and saw lots of machinery in the fields.

We also passed quite a few acres of sunflowers; and the usual hay and corn, of course.

It was very nice to see some lighter blue sky.  The temperature never rose significantly all day and when we got out of Poppy at our hotel in Rugby, North Dakota we removed our luggage as quickly as we could because it was so cold.  We are just wooses, I know.