Vacation, Day 4

Monday, July 21

After a breakfast of “eggs with stuff” (scrambled eggs with potatoes, onion, and pepper), we sat on the deck and enjoyed the morning. At 9:30, we set off up the Gunflint Trail to the Chik-Wauk Nature Center and Trail’s End campground.

Just before we got to the nature center, Jane spotted a moose eating water plants right at the side of the road! I got out and took a number of out-of-focus stills and a short video that was shaky but at least clear. Of course I didn’t discover the problem until we were back at the cabin when there was not possibility of corrective action. When will I learn to always use manual focus for wildlife? The auto-focus adjusted for the grass in front of the moose rather than the moose itself. Manual focus is a bit dicey, too since I went to bifocals. Sigh.

Grass, with a moose in the background

The new display at the nature center was of butterflies and moths. There wasn’t much there that I didn’t know. We weren’t able to find a specimen of the little brown butterfly we’d seen at the flower box earlier that morning. Some kind of skipper, probably.

Meanwhile, the nature center was offering a well-attended workshop for children in making nature journals. It was a cool idea. The paper was folded in half and bound with one small stick inside and another outside. The two sticks were held together with rubber bands top and bottom. The kids could decorate their journal with stamps. The facilitator encouraged them to write about things they saw in nature. While I support the concept, the activity created a good deal of noise and commotion.

We didn’t see anything noteworthy at Trail’s End. By this time, the day was hot. We were hungry. We went back to the cabin to finish the pulled pork.

Because there wasn’t much wind, we took the boat out fishing after lunch. It was very, very hot. Biting flies were making Jane crazy. Plus, the fish weren’t biting. At all. We gave it up pretty quickly.

A swim would have been refreshing. Jane thought about diving in with her clothes on. I raised the objection that we would never get the clothes dry. It seemed way too hard to peel off our existing clothes and get our swimsuits on over our sticky persons. We elected to just take cool showers instead.  That helped, but only briefly. It was Costa Rica hot. As soon as I was dressed and started doing anything, I was all sweaty again. Nothing for it but to mix up some tall gin and tonics, mostly ice and tonic, and have a good long happy hour.

For supper, I heated up some baked tomato pasta sauce that I’d brought from the home freezer. I put in half of the leftover WondeRoast chicken cut into bite-sized pieces and served it over spaghetti. We liked it. We finished the peach/blueberry/raspberry cobbler for dessert. The scones were a little stiff just out of the refrigerator, but the cold fruit was refreshing.

A storm came up just after dark and brought in cooler temperatures. We were glad.