Still just dating at the time of the 1994 triennial family reunion, Loren and Becky were married before the next reunion event rolled around. Much like the 1994 reunion, the 1997 version revolved around the expanding family, food, and games.
There weren’t many photos taken other than the obligatory family unit photos, which were shot in front of the host’s flower garden spelling out the family name, Gerszewski.
As I learned from the first reunion in 1994, the farmland is flat and fertile, originating from an ice age lake bed.
This time around, Becky and Loren camped at the nearby Old Mill State Park. Although the reunion was over the Fourth of July weekend, the evenings were chilly and required sweatshirts or jackets being that far north.
The door prize for being the most recently married was a trio of goldfish that somehow survived the eleven hour drive home! The photo is terrible, but, it’s a lesson for the modern mobile phone photographers. Back in the day, we had to just be hopeful that the photo would be decent after you sent it away for development. One of the three survived for over two years, not quite long enough to be passed along at the next reunion.
We’ll finish out the reunion section of this report with a typical northern Minnesota sunset.
On the return home, we detoured to visit Itasca State Park and the headwaters of the Mississippi River. As our home base is along the Mississippi River much further south, this was a fun opportunity to see where the big river gets going. We enjoyed another night of camping, some canoeing, and dipping toes in the very spot where the Mississippi begins the run to the Gulf of Mexico.
