North From Sauk Centre

After breakfast and a walk around Sauk Centre, it was time to head north toward Bemidji and The Lost 40.

While Sauk Centre shows us main street in small town America, highway 71 shows us agricultural America in some unique ways. While you see the conventional fields of corn and grain, the things that really catch your eye are the sunflowers and gladiolas.

This field of sunflowers appeared a bit sad and pessimistic.


While this one was full of vigor and optimism.


But this field of Gladiolas got me to backtrack a bit and stop.


The towns that I passed through included Round Prairie, Long Prairie, Eagle Bend and Wadena. Several had beautiful churches. This area was, in large part, settled by Polish immigrants in addition to the usual Scandanavian and German mix found in much of Minnesota. The Polish left their mark in the form of large Catholic churches such as this one at Browerville.


Founded originally as St. Joseph's it was combined with St. Peter's , a German parish also of Browerville, and given the neutral name, Christ the King.