Itasca ("VerITAS + CAput") Sunday
Well this is my first ever blog entry. This is a journal of our annual family vacation to Cass Lake, Minnesota, where we rent a cabin and fishing boat at Birch Villa Resort. I'm hoping I can go back and enter some posts for the past week that I missed, but if not I'll just try to review later. In any case, let's give it a try...
Today was Sunday. We found ourselves free to choose our own church today, since the rest of the Kingma clan has cleared out. And so we headed for the Evangelical "Free" church of Bemidji. We actually tried to find the Evangelical Covenant church first, but the Mapquest directions sent us out into no-man's land and no church was found, so we opted for our 2nd choice, which was actually a very good choice. The 11:00 a.m. contemporary service had great music, an inspiring sermon, and enough room in the newly-built sanctuary for us to feel welcome (as well as 5 choices of gourmet-flavored coffees afterward!). The kids voted to go there next year even though it was 15 minutes farther away than the Lutheran church.
After church, we headed out for Itasca. What had started out as a very promising, warm, sunny day was quickly becoming overcast and very gloomy. We were able to eek out a picnic lunch at Itasca just before the raindrops started to fall. It rained the rest of the afternoon and became cool as well. We were glad we hadn't bothered to bring the bikes along this year. We finally got to explore the Visitor center we've never been to and learned so many cool things about Itasca--like the meaning of the name: "Truth + Head" (see title for the Latin), as the true head of the Mississippi had been discovered after much searching. We also learned the connections between the "Cass" and "Schoolcraft" names we see here in Minnesota and those we see at home in Michigan (named after the same men--they sent a team of explorers from Michigan), and found links from Itasca to Cass Lake and Star Island. Pretty cool--although the boys needed a little convincing that history was cool!
After our learning experience was over, we headed to the headwaters area for ice cream in the restaurant (something else we've never done there!) and our annual visit to the gift shop. We unanimously decided to skip actually visiting the headwaters this year due to the inclement weather and the fact that we've seen them the past two years. We traveled "home" to our cabin for a taco supper and movie night (we cried over "Bridge to Terabithia"). Of course Chloe played with her friend Maddy who she couldn't wait to see all day. That about sums up our Sunday.