Hey, Lyda, we're ahead!

But you are clearly better at stamping than I am. Note that the third entry, the one that is both clear and right-side up, was stamped by the park ranger. 

Pose #2. Savanna Portage State Park (McGregor, MN)

Now that I have a State Park Passport, I am in "Gotta catch 'em all" mode. Note that a Park Passport is the opposite of a real passport, which allows you to visit places. This type of "passport" COMPELS you to visit them.

This two-day trip was mostly a lodging reconnaissance expedition. It turns out that a very small number of Minnesota State Parks have actual full-service cabins for rent (i.e., little houses with indoor plumbing), and an even smaller number have cabins sized for 2 people. Savanna Portage is one of them. Garni Guesthouse used to belong to the Garni family until the park got it away from them in 1992 and decided to keep it around to rent to tourists. At $120 it's an amazing deal: a fully functional small house with full kitchen and bath, heat, and a nicely furnished great room. It's completely isolated on a peninsula on Lake Savanna with its own boat dock, complete with rowboat. 

Savanna Portage is, unfortunately, neither the most interesting nor the most scenic park in the Minnesota Park System, but it sure has a great 4-season guest house. I'll bet it's a great place for stargazing when the air isn't full of smoke.

Here's the boat dock, complete with rowboat. Richard really wanted to try it out, but his mobility is limited and he decided it just looked too hard to get in and out of the thing. If the weather had been more agreeable we might have worked harder at it.

Strictly speaking, there was nothing wrong with the weather, which should have been a lovely sunny summer's day. Unfortunately, we chose to drive 150 miles due north into the most severe Air Quality Alert ever recorded in Minnesota, due to Canadian wildfires. Did you know there was a Level Purple? Apparently that's the level beyond Red. So instead of a cheery blue, this is what the sky looked like over the Garni boat dock. And that was during one of the better moments when you could actually see where the sun was and I briefly believed that it was starting to clear up.


The other objective of this trip was extending my mostly futile quest to find good swimming lakes at Minnesota State Parks. This one wasn't too bad. I'd give it a B or B+. The beachside picnic area is lovely, with large pines, shady benches, and a handsome WPA-built restroom building. No changing rooms, but changing in the restroom isn't too bad. But the official swim area is the usual toddler wading pool:  small, sandy, and shallow. On the plus side, Loon Lake is a small lake with no motor boats (just loons), so you can venture out of the pathetic little swim area into deeper water without fear of being decapitated. The small sandy beach extends into the water for an easy entry. The water was brown, but actually very clean. I think the brown color was from the pine needles. I splashed around on my inflatable alligator for a while, then beached it and went out past the buoys to swim some laps. And the loons put on a bit of a show, hooting and laughing maniacally and then doing that dramatic water takeoff that makes them seem about 3 times bigger than they are. Richard sat on that pretty shady bench and read while I played in the water. It was a nice afternoon expedition.


Back in the cabin, Richard found something really fun to peruse, and entertained me with juicy historical tidbits while I played solitaire on my phone. 

This is exactly the sort of reading matter I love to find in a vacation house: a meticulously researched self-published book about a local historical topic that almost nobody cares about except the author. This one starts with the melting of the glaciers, works its way forward into the Voyageur era, and lingers lovingly on the horrors of portaging for days through a muskeg swamp. I love that Mr. Greer started his research back in the 1940's by interviewing all the old-timers in the area, one of whom recalled the location of the old original portage path, which had by that time largely disappeared into the bog. If I remember correctly, it was unearthed by volunteers, who then proceeded to reenact the portage. Just once, I think. It was apparently far too miserable an experience to lead to a whole reenactment tradition.