We just got back from a ten day birding trip in the Upper Midwest. On purpose, you say? Why, yes, as a matter of fact, and we had a great trip, despite the sometimes bad weather and the terrible, horrible mosquitos and ticks. My packing was similar to our February South Texas trip. I took most of the same clothes, except I only wore warm things every day. We spent time in Minneapolis, Duluth, including the Sax-Zim Bog, and several places out on the prairie, in North Dakota.

If you saw my February post, what I took was almost the same: REI wheelie bag, Patagonia knapsack and waist pack, Marmot Goretex rain jacket, Arcteryx rain pants, Patagonia Nanopuff hoodie, Columbia everyday pants, North Face Canyonlands hoodie, Columbia Cades Cove hoodie, Eddie Bauer crew neck cotton tees in SS and LS, Salomon Goretex hiking boots, and Buff neck gaiter. I also took a pair of knee high neoprene Muck boots. They took up about 1/3 of my bag, but I stuffed them with my rain gear going, and dirty clothes coming home. I took my Tilley hat but only wore it one day. I wore an ancient Royal Robbins ball cap nearly every day because I could put up my hood, for rain or bug protection, and gloves much of the time. I regretted leaving them in the van on one of the last days. I have at least a half dozen bites. Re ticks: I hate and fear them. I found one on my hand and one on the back of the seat in front of me. Our guide found fourteen on his own person. We all did tick checks every night.

If I were to nominate the VIPs of my wardrobe, it would be the Columbia hoodie and the Marmot rain jacket. The hoodie worked with my neck gaiter to protect against mosquitos. They still got a few bites in, even using Deep Woods Off! towelettes, but the hoodie probably saved me from much worse. It’s very thin with a full zip, so great for layering. I wore the Marmot rain jacket every single day, for rain or wind protection.

The whole time we were in the Duluth area, we joked about “the ocean.” Lake Superior’s water temperature makes Duluth so much colder than anywhere else we went at that same latitude (Jamestown and Fargo, ND, for example).

We saw lots and lots of birds, of course. I added 27 new birds. However, many were warblers which are very hard to photograph. We spent seven hours looking for one rare bird, and another rare one, the Great Grey Owl, posed for us for nearly an hour. I was so grateful that we don’t have to go back to Minnesota in the winter! We also saw a wolf and a porcupine.

On our last day, on our way back to Minneapolis, we stopped for lunch in Sauk Centre, MN, boyhood home of Sinclair Lewis. He wrote Main Street and Babbitt, among others, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature. My husband and I were the only ones in our group of eight who had read any of his books, which surprised me.

1-3 wheelie bag, knapsack, waistpack

4 Marmot Goretex jacket

5 Patagonia Nanopuff hoodie

6 Columbia everyday pants

7 North Face Canyonlands hoodie

8 Columbia Cades Cove hoodie

9 Eddie Bauer crewneck tees

10 Salomon Goretex boots

11 Neoprene Muck boots

12 Deep Woods Off! Towelettes

13 Marbled Godwits

14 Merlin

15 Ruffed Grouse

16 Great Grey Owl

17 Blackburnian Warbler

18 Out on the prairie