Northern States Tour – Day 6

Day’s distance: 335 miles
Total trip distance: 1898 miles

Temperatures started and finished  in the mid 70’s, and we’re comfortable throughout the day relative to the prior few days. The winds were as strong as the prior day, but lightened a bit as I entered northern Minnesota’s more wooded regions.

Yes, I ticked off another state from the bucket list  🙂

Before leaving North Dakota, I stopped to call the Garmin support team. My GPS unit had been acting up. I have access to the OEM support unit within the larger team of support techs. They answer the phones immediately and were super helpful, as always.

As I had my laptop with me, I was able to quickly reinstall the recent update and it worked. They helped me do a few other minor things and I was on my way again.

The weather, though windy, was good enough to camp. Being the Friday before a long weekend, I wasn’t hopeful. Looking online for camping near Red Lake, I found Bemidji State Park was well reviewed. When I called, they were able to reserve me a site!

To get there, I traveled I-94 to just east of Fargo and started heading north.

The winds were blowing from the south and it was a relief to have a tail wind. The bike traveled upright and it was so quiet 🙂

I zigzagged through small two-lane, mostly straight highways, hoping my GPS was not taking me somewhere unplanned.

As it was past 5pm, and I still had a cell signal, I stopped to get on the laptop and do my usual Friday social media work for my company. That didn’t take too long as I had things pretty much ready to go.

I stopped for fuel towards the end of my day, even though I still had over 150 miles of range remaining. I guess now I’m overly cautious. That’s not a bad thing, but it turns out Bemidji is a sizeable town focused around the 6,765 acre lake and stopping for fuel before reaching town was unnecessary.

The campground was great and after setting up,

I walked to the lake shore for sunset.

The Rangers gave me some tourist maps that highlight some of the scenic byways heading east that I’ll look over in the morning to set my route to Lake Superior.