July 2011 Journal

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July 4

We’re here at Vermilion Lake in Tower Minnesota. It was a long trip over from the Upper Peninsula in Michigan but worth the trip. Our campsite is nice and tucked in the woods. It has a fair amount of privacy which we like. It’s nice to keep the shades open and not feel like someone is looking in at you. It feels like camping.

The campground is situated on a point of the lake called HooDoo Point and it has a nice swimming beach and boat access. Dan and I took our kayaks out one day and enjoyed the warm weather and sunshine. The Minnesota government shut down when we got here so Dan could not get a fishing license but he’s fishing anyway.

There’s a nice bike trail here in town. It goes from the point here into town center and actually goes all the way south to the Mississippi River and north to the town of Ely which is about 25 miles away. We’ve spent a few days biking around.

Tower is a very small town with a Main Street that’s just a few blocks long. There are a few restaurants, a small grocery, liquor store and a few other assorted places. There’s an old train car located here that you can tour. It used to carry iron from the mines. This area is a big mining community with silver, copper and iron as the most mined metals. Wildflowers are every where; it’s a very pretty place, very rugged and wild feeling.

The town of Ely is a bit bigger and has that small town woodsy feeling like you are in Aspen or somewhere out west. It’s a rugged town at the end of the road and the launch off point for the Boundary Waters Park which is a huge park consisting of many miles of lakes and wilderness. Our canoe outfitter is there and they have been organizing our trip into Quetico Provincial Park in Canada which is even more remote than the Boundary waters.

We spent a day in Ely and went to the International Wolf Center to see and learn about the local Timber Wolves. Evidently there are a lot of them in the area. They have two wolves that can be viewed in a natural type setting. It was neat to see them so close. They are huge weighing about 125 pounds each. We also stopped by the outfitter and finalized our plans for our trip and gave them our passport information since we are leaving the country. From there we took a nice paddle with our kayaks into the river that the outfitter is on. It was a nice day.

We spent the 4th of July here in Tower and rode our bikes into town and enjoyed the parade then relaxed on the beach for the afternoon. We tried to see fireworks but we only was a few because a storm rolled in and we had to race back to our RV. Luckily we could see them from our beach so we didn’t have far to go.

Our trip into Quetico starts tomorrow July 5th and we return on the 12th and have one day before we move along and head down to Wisconsin for a family wedding.

July 13th

We arrived back to the RV last night after 8 days out in the wilderness of Quetico Provincial Park in Canada. It’s just north of the Minnesota border. We headed out on July 5th with all of our gear and flew by float plane into a customs and immigration site on a lake in Canada and then from there to a back woods fishing resort. The resort then drove us by boat (with all of our gear and a canoe) 16 miles to the end of the lake where we were dropped off and our adventure began.

The first thing we had to do was cross a hiking/portage trail (yes, on foot with all of our gear and a canoe) across land from Lac La Croix into another lake called McAree Lake. Luckily it was only about ¼ of a mile for that portage but it was bug ridden and very muddy.

McAree Lake was gorgeous and pristine and we had it all to ourselves. We stopped pretty quickly for some lunch on a moss covered rock outcropping then decided to paddle a short distance to a camp site that was listed on our map. Our outfitter the (NCCO) North Country Canoe Outfitter had circled the site as a nice one and it sure was. It was in a private cove on a small island. We quickly set up camp and then Dan took the canoe out and found an awesome Walleye fishing hole nearby and caught about 40 Walleye’s in 40 minutes. He was set for the week and now in true fisherman heaven.

Back at camp I hung in my hammock and just enjoyed the peace and tranquility of being alone in such a vast wilderness. That night we made friends with a small red squirrel who was brazen enough to come right up to us and beg for food and a seagull which also came up into camp looking for food. I can’t believe that seagulls actually beg for food all the way up here just like at the Jersey shore. I didn’t even expect to see seagulls here. After dinner we sat out watching the sunset while also keeping an eye on about a dozen spiders in a pine tree next to us that were busily spinning their webs getting ready for their nights catch. Nature is just wonderful to watch.

The two following days we were on the move and headed deeper into the back country. We crossed another portage into Minn Lake and saw lots of timber wolf scat (filled with deer hair) along the way. Unfortunately we did not get to see a timber wolf, or a bear or moose on the whole trip. We spent the night at an island on Minn Lake and went to sleep with the mosquitoes buzzing and owls hooting all night long.

The bugs were better than they usually are in the park but each night at 9:30 the mosquitoes would “lift off” all at once and swarm us. We had to make sure that at that time we were ready to dive into the tent quickly, so around 8:30pm we started brushing teeth, setting up sleeping bags and putting things away for the night, then we would just sit and watch the sunset until “lift off” as we called it. It was inevitable that about twenty would follow us into our tent, no matter how fast we closed the door and we would spend the next few minutes smacking mosquitoes. After a week of this our tent now looks like somebody was murdered in it as there are blood spots all over the walls from where we smacked mosquitoes that had already bitten us. I think Dan had his bug net on his head the whole week!

The other bugs that were the real pain were biting flies. They were small like houseflies but boy could they be relentless. The came out in the afternoons and kind of were on and off, there were either a lot of them or just a few at any time during the day. You had to have long pants and top on or else they were vicious and would near about eat you alive. I got quite a few bites because I was always in my sandals and cropped pants. Bug repellant did not work against them at all, you had to be covered. Right now, my legs are covered with little tiny red bite marks and the back of my neck, which took the real beating, is all lumps.

We paddled a long day from Minn Lake up the Darkey River into Darkey Lake. There were four portages, some easier than others, around waterfalls. It was pretty cool being in a river after a few days in lakes. It was really pretty but we had a long day of paddling and did not stop to relax and take it in too much and kept moving. We actually saw our first people on the Darkey River, one group of two men in canoes fishing and another group of three canoes paddling downstream (we were going up stream so we passed each other).

A thunderstorm pretty much chased us the last hour into Darkey Lake and we set up quickly at the closest campsite. A half an hour after we arrived, the first rain started and we sat out under our tarp enjoying watching the passing thunderstorms cross the lake. The rain moved like a wall of rain across the lake and was so interesting to watch. The lightning was so cool also. We really enjoyed the storm and I think I got great video of it too.

We decided to spend a few days at Darkey Lake and relax for a bit. We spent one day checking out the other campsites on the lake and decided that we had the best one. We were at the tip of an island that was pretty narrow so we had water on three sides of us. It was kind of like a lagoon in the back with a rocky outcropping in the front of the site. We set our tent up at waters edge and every night went to sleep looking out at the lake and the end of the sunset from our tent. We didn’t have to hang a bear bag on the island either so that made things easier for us.

We also took a trip down to the end of the lake to see some Indian pictographs that were painted a few hundred years ago on the cliff walls. It’s amazing that they found some kind of “paint” that lasted for so many years. We had also seen them on our ride that first dropped us off as our boat driver took us past them. As is custom I made tobacco offerings at the sites of pictographs and at our campsite each night. Our outfitter had told us about that and I was sure to bring some loose tobacco along.

Relaxing on Darkey Lake was wonderful. We had the lake to ourselves for three days and spent it lolling around, reading in the hammock, fishing, stretching, doing yoga, meditating and watching nature around us. We ate some awesome Walleye for lunch and Dan caught some huge fish. He caught one Walleye that was about 35 inches long, just short of the record fish. Lots of the fish were actually too big for the two of us to eat and we had to let them go. We saw plenty of beaver dams and even got to see a beaver relaxing in the sun. One evening we watched a few turtles trying to climb a rock wall along the lakes edge all the while being smacked around by waves on a windy day. It was tough for them to get up and then they would reach the top and see Dan and me and run and drop off the cliff into the water sticking their little heads out watching us. One day we actually saw one digging a nest next to a tree stump. I think she laid eggs because we watched her dig a hole and came back a little later and she was covering it up again. I got some video of that and what a privilege it was to get to experience something like that.

There were lots of birds and waterfowl. We saw tons of Eagles, and one that must have nested close to our campsite because it was always around. The other birds would fly around and attack it while it was sitting in a tall dead tree and it would just squawk and flap its wings but wouldn’t budge. They are such majestic birds. We even saw one attempt to catch a fish, flying towards the water, talons out ready to scoop a fish out of the lake but at the last minute he veered off, the fish must have gone deeper. Another afternoon we chased a Merganser around for a little while. It had about 8 chicks with it and they would all “run” on the water if we got too close. It was so funny to watch. The loons were on every lake and called all the time. Their sound is so haunting. Again, I just love experiencing nature this way.

After three days we headed off of Darkey Lake and spent a long day paddling and portaging. It kind of turned into a fiasco of sorts at the end but made the trip memorable. We packed up and headed out by 8:30 am and paddled across the lake. Of course we were following my directions and got a bit lost but finally found our way into the right cove where our first portage of the day was supposed to be but we couldn’t find it. After some searching we found what appeared to be an old animal trail but yes it was actually the correct portage trail. It was very rocky, slippery and overgrown and a struggle to maneuver in carrying the gear but we made it across into beautiful Wicksteed lake.

Wicksteed was gorgeous and had lots of islands, the morning sun was so beautiful on the lake, and we really enjoyed our paddle across it. We crossed another portage that must have been a relatively easy one because I can’t remember anything special about it, and then came the hard part. A ¾ mile portage that started out with a struggle just to find it, we couldn’t pull the boat in close to shore because it was swampy and had all these floating grasses, the paddles sunk two feet in the muddy bottom so you couldn’t get out of the canoe even in the water, it was a real pain getting to the actual land just to start the portage and that’s where the fun began! Once we had our gear off loaded we then had to carry it ¾ of a mile across to the other lake, first up a really steep hill (I have no idea how Dan carried a canoe up it), then across a mountain and down the other side (another steep hill), across a swamp which had logs across it for us to straddle and try to cross as they rolled under our feet (still carrying gear, and a canoe). We finally made it the ¾ of a mile to land and then had to go back and do it again with the rest of the gear. I pooped out part of the way through the portage and poor Dan had to finish it for me. The one good thing about it was that I saw a badger type animal called a “Fisher” while in the woods at the top of the mountain, and that made the whole trip worth it. I’ve never seen a Fisher before.

With the hardest portage done for the day we headed out across Pond Lake towards our destination on McAree Lake. Of course I had the maps again and we headed in the wrong direction only to find out that we had to back paddle to a different cove. The silver lining to that story is that while paddling back across the lake Dan caught his first Lake Trout and it was a huge one. He was thrilled to have caught it; he’s never caught one in his life and this one was huge!

We were getting hungry and thirsty but just wanted to be done so we paddled on and finally found and crossed our fourth portage of the day into McAree Lake at the opposite end from where we had been a few days before. The first three campsites we checked out were not very nice and one had lots of trash (this lake is easier to access here and gets more use) so we paddled across the lake (still hungry and thirsty and did I mention being eaten alive from those relentless flies) hoping to stay at a campsite at a place called McAree Falls. We stopped at the site but it really didn’t have a great tent site so we grabbed a quick snack and once again moved our weary bug bitten bodies on. We headed towards the site we stayed at our first night out and finally got there only to find someone else staying there so we moved on again. Did I mention we were also fighting head winds along the way? We stopped at a site on the island we had lunch on the first day and finally decided to stay and set up camp. We got our tent set up and couldn’t wait to sit down and rest for the night, still being bug bitten, they were just attacking me, when I looked up and oops…saw that there were two dead trees overhanging our tent, one leaning on the other, cant sleep under that, especially on a windy night. We picked up our tent and moved it to another location only to see another two dead trees nearby after setting up but decided to stay as they were not as much as a threat as the other two. We finally got a bath in the lake, took some Tylenol (both of us, which is a rare thing for us to do), had a shot of Bourbon and chilled out in our bug free tent. Life was good again. We got a gorgeous sunset on top of it all; the day was a memorable one.

Our last day arrived and we decided to head down the river towards Lac la Croix where the tow boat was scheduled to pick us up the next day. We had three portages, none so terribly bad, and went through two expecting to camp at one of two sites listed on our map but one did not have a level tent site and the other had multiple dead trees. It was once again a windy day. (The windy days were blessings because the bugs were much less) We made it to the third portage point which was also our pick up site for the next day and hung out for a while hoping the wind would die down and we could make a run out across the lake to camp on an island. We hung out for a few hours, the wind did not die down and we finally decided to head out anyway so we secured our gear to our boat, put on our lifejackets (first time all week we needed them) and paddled thru the rapids instead of portaging around them, all against the wind over to the island.

It was a good thing we did the trip because the island was really nice with a great campsite and we had an enjoyable last night with another awesome sunset. It was much better that camping at the portage point where there was space to set up the tent but no actual campsite. We were high on a point over looking the lake on three sides of us. There was even a latrine at this site (first one all week). It was a breezy night so there were relatively few bugs and it was cool to sleep, I even had to get up in the middle of the night and get some warmer pants and a long sleeve shirt on.

Our final morning arrived and it looked like rain was coming in so we quickly packed our gear and made some pancakes on the griddle and then headed back to our portage point. We hung out there for two hours, Dan fishing, me reading and cleaning up my nails and organizing gear. Dan caught one last huge Northern Pike and then our boat came and whisked us off to the resort to meet our seaplane.

The flight back was wonderful and so enjoyable to see the park from above. It’s just miles of pristine lakes and wilderness. It’s all over for now, just pictures, suntans and memories. We can’t wait to go back…

July 19th

The final week of our trip has sure been a busy one. On Thursday July 14th we packed up and began our journey towards home. We drove for two days stopping at Wisconsin Dells for a quick overnight where we stayed at an adult only campground. It had a bar and grill and we hung out there for a while having dinner and cocktails. On Friday morning we decided to drive into town and check it out. The town is noted for having lots of huge water parks, attractions and amusements and they weren’t kidding. There are miles of them one after another. It’s a true kids haven!

Mid day we finished our drive to Lake Geneva Wisconsin. We stayed for the weekend as our nephew Danny Davis was getting married to his sweetie Tekela. Lake Geneva is considered the Newport of the central states. It’s a nice upscale town situated on a gorgeous lake ringed with beautiful homes and a very nice shopping/dining district and beach. It’s the oasis for the people of Chicago to travel to on the weekends and is a very happening place with lots of activity.

(note: I’m going to call my nephew “Danny” and my husband “Dan” since they have the same name. That will keep them from getting mixed up. Dan’s brother Richie is married to Karen, Danny’s mom)

Friday was a busy one. We arrived in town mid afternoon, set up at Coachman’s Terrace Campground and headed right out to the lake to hang out on the beach and take a swim. Late afternoon we met Danny’s mom Karen and her husband Richie along with Karen’s sister Elaine and her husband Reddy for a cocktail at their hotel. After that we were invited to Danny’s Grandpa Jim’s home. He and his wife Bonnie were so sweet and we enjoyed a lovely house tour and some wine and good conversation before saying our good byes and heading into town to meet Linda and Bob and Barb and Shelly (Dan’s parents) for dinner. We followed that up at a bar meeting Danny’s fiancé Tekela and their awesome friends. It was a late night…

Saturday was the big day so we got all gussied up and headed to the boat dock on Lake Geneva. The wedding reception was held on “The Duchess” boat which is a two story boat with a glass enclosed air conditioned lower level with a bar and then an open air roof top deck with another bar. Danny and Tekela had made all of the food with some help from friends (Danny is a chef) and boy was it good. The party was so much fun. It was nice to meet Tekelas family and all of their friends. The boat reception was followed by cocktails and appetizers at a lakeside patio on a nearby lake. It was a lovely day that went off without a hitch.

On Sunday we were invited to go for a pontoon boat ride on Grandpa Jim’s boat with Karen and Richie and Elaine and Reddy. The weather was gorgeous and Jim took us all along the lake shore telling us the history of the lake and about all the gorgeous homes. We even stopped for the guys to take a dip in the lake before heading home and closing up the RV and moving out.

We found out that there was a brunch scheduled at an estate that belonged to one of Danny’s friend’s families so we parked the RV in a Wal-Mart and headed over for a final good bye kiss and some bagels before finally making the hour and a half drive into Chicago. We ended up driving to a campground that was south of Chicago so we lost some time doing that but it was worth it because we knew the RV was in a secure place. We stayed at the Hollywood Oasis Casino. They had a special RV campground with hookups. We quickly parked the RV and jumped right into the car and headed back into Chicago where we met Barb and Shelly for dinner at a restaurant called Peregrine which Tekela had recommended. Dinner was superb and we had a nice walk through Lincoln Park before heading back to the casino.

We woke up on Monday with the intent on driving for a while and stopping at a campground on Lake Erie to enjoy some final rest and relaxation before making the final push home but that’s not what ended up happening. The jeep had some issues and could not be towed so we had to drive it to a nearby Jeep dealer and hang out until 2:30 before it was fixed. Luckily they did get it fixed for us and we finally got moving towards home. We got lucky again and found an Ohio rest area that was just before the Lake Erie exit that had electric hook ups. We’ve never seen hook ups at a rest area and it’s such a nice idea. It cost $20, you pay in a machine and get a ticket for your windshield. They even had water and a dump station.

This morning we drove to East Harbor State Park which was the park we had planned to stay overnight last night. We parked the RV at the beach/picnic area (right on the water) and enjoyed a leisurely day swimming, reading and lying in the sun before setting out towards home. Everything worked out and we are now back on schedule. Tonight we are staying at a campground in Woodland PA and should only be a little over 4 hours from home tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing family and friends we haven’t seen for a while. It’s been an awesome trip!

Past Journals

July 2011

June 2011

September 2010

May 2008

April 2008

March 2008

February 2008

December 2007

November 2007

October 2007

September 2007

August 2007

July 2007