Itasca State Park

This week Maarit went on her first family mini-vacation. We rented a cabin in Itasca State Park and played at the Mississippi Headwaters for a few days. Maarit did a great job riding in the car for the 3 hours there and she was pretty thrilled with the amount of swimming she was able to do while were were in the park. Here are the highlights: Above, Maarit taste-tests a red pine, the bark is crunchy and fibrous! Yum Yum.
Swimming with Daddy in Lake Itasca, mommy got a leech that she carried around with her all day. Yippie~ A family of ducks swam right by Maarit while she was swimming, she was so excited and yelled and waved at them as they swam by.
Maarit and Daddy check out the largest White Pine in the State, a hundreds of years old huge tree. Maarit appears to have her Papa Russell's fondness for trees, she spent a considerable amount of time at the park pointing to different trees, saying 'YAYA' and waving at them!
Mommy and Maarit hiking to see more trees and a historic Giant Bison kill site. Mommy thought there would be cool artifacts (in another life I would have been an archaeologist, but now that I'm a mom I sure am glad that I am a teacher with summers off), but no such thing, just the sight which was really just a boggy swamp.
Maarit is excited to see the Headwaters of the Mississippi River! Here she is at the official starting point.
Splashing in the headwaters with Daddy.
Brave little girl, ready to jump in and swim!
Mommy and Maarit on the bridge over the Headwaters.
Mommy and Maarit swimming in the Mississippi.
The Firetower over look that Daddy really wanted to climb so.....
The sign telling you how it's dangerous to climb the tower, note the bottom left hand picture that shows the tower leaning over and a person being violently blown from the tower in a giant windstorm.....mildly scary.
Maarit says to Mommy "Ah Ah Ha!" which means, don't be such wimp mom, let's go! Daddy agreed.
Maarit at the top of the tower, not nearly as nervous as Mommy. Actually she really enjoyed the hike up the rickety and shaky tower.
This is what she saw.

We had a wonderful little vacation, we rented bikes and cruised around the park and enjoyed lots of trees and water. Our cabin was adorable and rustic, original 1930s construction, but the bed must have been from the 1930s as well...not so comfortable. Oh well. During the trip, Maarit got a new tooth, her top right front tooth. She was so friendly and happy the whole time brightened many visitors' days. A couple people began calling her the 'singing baby' because she would see people and wave and do her 'yadabama' little 'song'.

Baby Fawn update: He appeared in our yard this morning and made Karhu almost loose her mind. Appears to be healthy and growing...no mommy with him.