Vacation summary

Jane and I did some new things this year on our annual trip to the Boundary Waters. I was proud of us. On our way up the north shore of Lake Superior on Saturday, we stopped at Split Rock Lighthouse.

Split Rock Lighthouse and fog horn building (left)

The Fresnel lens of the lighthouse was shipped from France as individual prisms. I couldn’t find any information about how many prisms there were. I’m sure someone counted as they assembled the lens on site. The lens weighs 4 tons and floats on a pool of mercury. No such thing as occupational hazards in 1910 when the lighthouse first began operations. At that point, there was no road to the lighthouse. All supplies came in by boat and had to be hauled up the cliff. The road when through 20 years or so later. By the 1940’s, it became a tourist destination. It was decommissioned in 1969.

After two days in the car, we spent Sunday hanging out at the cabin. The morning was calm, misty and beautiful.

Our dock and boat in the Sunday morning calm

The view from the deck

We went out fishing in the afternoon. We caught mostly small bluegill. Here’s a picture of one of the larger ones. They are beautiful fish.

Bluegill

Monday was too windy to take the boat out. We drove up the Gunflint trail, stopping at the Chik-Wauk Museum and Nature Center. I can never tell if they keep adding things, or I didn’t see everything last time, or I don’t remember, or some combination of all of the above, but I always learn something new. This year we learned all about the first owners of Clearwater Lodge, Petra and Charlie Boostrom. They had 10 children, and ran the lodge for 30 years. Pretty amazing.

After lunch, we went into Grand Marais to pick up some things we needed, such as hand lotion and Dove bars. In a departure from our usual routine, we did NOT go to Sydney’s for custard.

Tuesday we had our big road trip day, this time to Thunder Bay, Ontario. Jane got a passport for the occasion. I already had on from our Costa Rica trip. I first became interested in Fort William, which is heavily advertised in Grand Marias. The more I read about it, however, the more it seemed like same old, same old—just like the fort at Grand Portage. Jane had done some research beforehand and suggested we go to Sleeping Giant Provincial Park.

The view of Sleeping  Giant across Thunder Bay: the head and chest are to the left, and he has very long legs

We drove around the park for quite a while before we figured out where anything was. Canada is not big on signage. We found out that one of the legends of the sleeping giant was that a lesser god betrayed his people’s secret silver stash to the white folk. That made one of the gods angry, so the guy was turned into stone. A bad day.

The cliffs of Sleeping Giant

Our next stop was Ouimet Canyon. A short, mostly accessible trail led to enormous stone cliffs. The view was spectacular.

Ouimet Canyon

One of the two overlooks had an “Indian head” stone. The legend goes that a lesser god accidentally killed his beloved, the daughter of a greater god, and hid the body. The greater god got angry and turned the guy to stone. Another bad day.

Indian head

Wednesday we hung around the cabin, fishing off the dock, and reading to recover from our Big Adventure in Canada. A pair of loons with two chicks entertained us.

Loon family

Thursday morning was calm and damp. Spider webs were visible everywhere in the horsetails growing by the dock.

Spider webs in the horsetails

Mirror-calm lake on Thursday morning

We took the boat out again Thursday afternoon. The fishing wasn’t great. We got a good laugh when Jane pulled up a baby perch that was clinging to the leech several inches down from the hook.

Ambitious baby perch trying to eat a leech almost as big as itself

It rained all morning Friday. The loons spent a great deal of time feeding their babies in front of the cabin.

Loons in the rain 

The wind picked up in the afternoon, and the temperature dropped to 45 degrees. The rain became more of a mist. We had to use up the last of the leeches, so we went down to the dock to fish in the drizzle. The loons were still hanging around. We had one of the more exciting moments of the trip when I turned my back to the lake so I could help Jane get out of her chair. I heard something very large splash in the water behind me. “What was that?” I asked Jane

“An otter! It stuck it head up right behind you and looked me in the eye. I could see its whiskers! It was very cute.”

I turned around in time to see an otter head pop up, then another, and another. They were very cute. Too bad my camera was in the camera. In the absence of any otter pictures, I will end this blog with a montage of pretty bad videos of the loons and chicks. If you look and listen carefully, you can see the adults come up with small fish and hear the gentle cooing of the parents to the chicks and two loon cries.