Albert Lea, MN

Sunday, August 17
I forgot we took a hike on Sunday at Hidden Bluffs to the top of the bluffs. I found the pictures of the hike when I downloaded the latest pictures.

This was a view of the campground from on top of the bluff.

Here is another view of another part of the campground.

This was a creek running through the park.

We kept seeing these tiny bright yellow birds flying around the campground.  The breast and underside of the bird are also bright yellow with dark wings.  I looked it up in my bird book and found out it is an American Goldfinch.  Beautiful!! 

Monday, August 18

Today we moved to Myre - Big Island State Park in Albert Lea, MN.   It was an easy drive.  In Minnesota you can buy an annual state park pass to all state parks for $25 or pay $5 per night in addition to the camping fees.  Since we plan to stay in state parks for 8 nights the annual pass will pay for itself.  The nightly camping fee at this state park is $26.

Here is our site.  There is lots of space between camping sites.

Tuesday, August 19
We are not too far away from the Winnebago manufacturing plant in Forest City, IA.  Winnebago gives 2 tours a day and they are free.  We decided to attend the 1pm tour today.

This is the Iowa Welcome Center designed like a barn & silo so we had to get a picture.

Here is the visitors center.  There were about 24 of us in the tour.  They actually drove us around to different buildings.  We were not allowed to take pictures.  It was very interesting.  Winnebago actually makes all their parts except for the chassis which is manufactured by Freightliner, and of course, the appliances. Winnebago has a few other facilities not far from Forest City and has a total # of employees of over 2600.  The facility in Forest City is over 200 acres.  We got to see most of the processes that they do. It was very interesting.

After dinner, we decided to take a hike on some of the hiking trails here in the park.  We ended up walking about 3 miles total.

This was an old dead tree that looked neat against the clearing sky.

There were open fields then thick trees and bushes, then more open fields.  We started on our walk about 7pm and did not get back till about 8:30.  As the evening wore on we began to see deer.

Not a bad picture seeing that it was taken with Tic's I-Phone.  That is a buck at the tree line with a doe and 2 fawns running towards the trees.

Here's a big doe with a fawn running into the trees.

As we turned a corner on the trail there was another fawn within 15 feet of us.  It took off as soon as we stopped.  We had a really great walk.