Day Eight - Goodbye Minnesota, Hello Wisconsin!

On Saturday, we packed up on were on the road by 9am.  We were sad to be leaving our vacation, but we had a great time!  The place we stayed was a fine retreat while we weren't on the road.  The 8 state parks we visited were great!  Here is the list in order of visit.

1. Crow Wing State Park
2. Itasca State Park
3. Lake Bemidji State Park
4. Mille Lacs Kathio State Park
5. Carlos Lake State Park
6. Glacial Lakes State Park
7. Charles Lindberg State Park
8. Buffalo River State Park

We are pretty sure we visited more State Parks in Minnesota than what we've visited in Wisconsin!  We feel one of our plans will be to get a Yearly Permit for WI State Parks in 2009 and start going to those.  I can't say enough about how much I learned visiting the Minnesota state parks as well are how enjoyable it was to be outside, getting exercise, and being able to do so with our dogs.

One of the things we enjoyed most about our vacation is that the places we visited felt like there were reserved just for us!  We rarely saw other people in the parks, and all other places were not crowded.  We visited many nice antique shops and 2 used book stores.  We also got a sense of local personality and flair at local restaurants (non-chain).  Since over the past 3 married years, and year prior to being married we've done some good regional traveling (and Honduras for honeymoon) we plan to get a wall map of the U.S. so we can start pinning where we have been.  Each trip we take we bank more great memories and learn more about how we like to travel and what we like to do.  We are blessed to have each other, our dogs, a reliable car that gets us around, and the financial ability to do our traveling (although we are frugal about it!).  I'm already thinking about where we could go next!