It was a beautiful day today, but a hot one. Above are some lily pads in the waterfront park in the area of the aquifer.

We found some bugs, too, which is kind of unusual along the trail. We were batting mosquitos away for quite a while.

Bethany: "These mosquitos are like dragonflies!"

We started a new regime today that Bethany read about in a magazine. You walk for 20 minutes, then stop and do some exercises, the walk for 20 minutes, stop again and exercise.

We found a quiet corner on the Bemidji State University campus to do our exercises, which consisted of knee bends, lunges, etc., and working with a resistance band. It went pretty well, with our magazine opened on the cement in front of us.

At Diamond Point Park, I took a dip in the lake to cool off, but it was sooooo cold. The tops of my feet were like ice. It felt like going into cold tap water. I guess it’s the combination of a hot day with water that hasn’t seen a lot of hot days. There was one day I waded in the lake when it would have felt perfect to just jump right in, but it was not at all like that today. I was in the water maybe a minute or two, just long enough to beat the heat for a while.

On the way back, we found our little shady corner again and repeated the exercises, which were a little harder this time. One of the exercises with the resistance bands involves standing back to back with each person stretching the band in front of her.

Bethany: "Oh yay. Back sweat!"

But it’s better than one person with back sweat standing against a person with a dry back!

We looked at some other along-the-way exercise ideas, too, and thought we might try them on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Today’s route took a couple of hours, so we’ll probably need to cut the route down to accommodate the exercises. It’s nice to get the rest of our bodies moving and still enjoy the walking.

  Here’s today’s mystery photo:

Our last photo was of the dinosaur outside Headwaters Science Center. We got our first guess, too, which was cool. It came from Julie (Bratvold) Liew, who formerly had Bethany’s job at the Pioneer before moving to New York City a few years ago. Julie still keeps tabs on her friends here.

It’s nice to be back along the trail. See you Thursday!

– Laurie