Boundary Waters, Day 3

It was a beautiful day. Calm, fog on the water, cool. 

The rowboat waiting for adventure

Fog in the bay

The fog lifted after breakfast but the vegetation continued to drip with condensed water.  

Dew on the vegetation

Horsetails with beads of water at every joint bent over the smooth water in the lake.

Drops of dew hanging from the joints of the horsetails over the water

Jane rowed around the bay. Nothing was biting including the little nipper fish. I took over the oars and rowed all the way to the other side of the lake to verify that the fish weren’t biting there either. Still, we kept reminding ourselves, it was a lovely day to be on the water.

When I was on my way to join Jane on the deck after my shower, she pointed out a magnificent spider on the screen door. I slowly opened the door to take a picture, and it moved to the side of the cabin.

A magnificent spider

Jane watched it while I was making my lunch. When I went back to the deck, she said, “See those two little stripes of white? That’s spider poop. Or pee. I don’t know which.”

“It’s probably uric acid,” I conjectured, since that’s what white excrement usually is, “so solid pee.” As I thought about it, spiders wouldn’t have much poop. They inject digestive enzymes into prey and suck out the juice. Not exactly a high-fiber diet. The majority of the waste they would have to get rid of would be nitrogen. Birds, insects, and apparently spiders process nitrogen waste into uric acid crystals rather than urea (as we do) to conserve water.

We headed into Grand Marais. We had found some points of interest in a tourist guide that we hadn’t been to before. Also, we had some shopping to do. Fog still hung in thick patches along the north shore of Lake Superior.

Foggy patches along the lake shore

We went to Paradise Beach to look for agates, even though I was pretty sure I wouldn’t recognize an unpolished agate if it bit me in the ass. I was right about that. We found no agates. The loose gravel was hard to walk on, and Jane was done hiking for the day when we got back to the car.

Paradise beach looking southwest

Paradise beach looking northeast

We stopped at a roadside park and trailhead near Colville on our way back toward Grand Marias. I saw bunchberries in bloom by the beach.

Bunchberry

I did a quick walk down the Kadunce [sic] River trail. It looked like a nice path for another day when Jane felt like hiking again. The trail was wide and mostly level, rising gently as it followed the river.

The Kadunce River

We picked up a few items we needed in Grand Marais and then went for custard. Jane ordered the cones at Sydney’s while I made my calls home. I told Hilda we’d been agate hunting even though I was sure I couldn’t recognize an unpolished agate.

“If it bit you in the ass,” Hilda said. I must say that a lot.

Jane grilled the second steak for supper, since it had been thawed for several days by then. We had a foil-roasted onion and warmed up leftover fries from Grandma’s.

We ate too much. And we were ready for bed at 7:10. Too early. We talked until 8:15, mostly about whether or not we could go to bed yet. It had been a busy day.