Boundary Waters, Days 5 and 6

 Thursday, August 11

It was another beautiful day in the Boundary Waters. We planned to take our drive around the Greenwood Lake loop, looking for charismatic megafauna, such as moose. We packed a lunch of cheese curds, summer sausage, crackers, yogurt, and carrots in the cooler. I hoped that we could do a little hiking, as Jane was feeling pretty good.

We stopped at Kimball Lake first. The Forest Service map showed a trail around the lake. It was likely to be flat, and I assumed it would be an easy walk for us. Wrong. Although there were no hills, the trial was abundantly strewn with roots and rocks. Jane doesn’t have the balance for that, and taking the walker was out of the question.

The so-called "easy" trail around Kimball Lake

We walked a little way, nevertheless. The first lake overlook we came to showed mirror-like water reflecting the trees.

A calm morning

Bracket fungi grew out of a nurse log (a dead and downed tree, which has concentrated nutrients compared to the soil) along the trail. 

Bracket fungi on a nurse log

By the second overlook, a breeze had come up. We took a short cut back to the campground and continued on our way.

Kimball Lake with cattails and ripples

We took an alternate route to Highway 61, the main road along Lake Superior, traveling on a road we’d never been on before. Unlike some of our adventures (such as the Lullaby Creek Road fiasco of last year), the road actually got better once we got away from where the campground traffic had left the road wash-boarded and pot-holed. Our plan was to do the loop in reverse this year. We went up the Highway 61 to Hovland and turned left on Arrowhead Highway. We had not gone very far when we met a man blocking the road with his pickup. He came to the car and explained that we could not get to Esther Lake because the road had washed out.

With our plan for the day blown, we went back down Highway 61 to Judge C. J. Magney State Park. My parents loved this park. We ate lunch in the car and hiked a short way to a bridge over one branch of the Brule River.

Brule River upstream from the bridge

Brule River downstream from the bridge

My portrait on the bridge

Jane's portrait on the bridge

The Grand Marais event calendar listed wood-fired baking and basketmaking demonstrations by the North House Folk School from Thursday through Saturday. We stopped by to see what was going on, which turned out to be not much. The broom maker was chatting with a friend and paid no attention to me as I looked over her table of brooms for sale. The wood-fired oven was just being built. Three young adults were stamping barefoot in a combination of clay and sand to get it to the right consistency for building the top of the oven. They invited me to take off my shoes and join them. I declined. The man supervising the construction squirted water on the clay from time to time. Another woman was rubbing solid chunks of dry clay through a screen of hardware cloth in preparation for hydrating and kneading. That looked like work.

We walked around the Folk School area. There was a cute little house there that I assumed had been built by one of the classes. It had grass growing on it, as was common on Scandinavian roofs. The modern green roof is lined with plastic. I just started wondering how the early settlers waterproofed their rooftop gardens when I noticed birch bark shingles. Clever!

Log house with birch shingles and a green roof

We went to Tofte next. On our way up, it looked like there were some cute shops there, and we’d never stopped. Upon closer investigation, there was one shop, a bakery, a post office, and a general store. The shop had nice things, but nothing we particularly wanted. We looked around the general store as well. It was a typical small grocery, not much selection, and everything in the freezer case looked like it had been there since the last glacier retreated.

The Grand Marais events calendar said there was a local food market at 4:30. We had to ask at the Visitor Center where it was. There were few vendors and many customers. With the short growing season and the excessively rocky soil, I expect it’s tough to get a good tomato in the Grand Marais area.  We didn’t by anything there either. We had lots of lovely produce at the cabin from my garden.

Sparse vendor turnout at the local food market

Following our theme of doing things we hadn’t done before, we went to My Sister’s Place for supper. It seemed like a good burger place. I was intrigued by the Juicy Lucy on the menu. I’d learned about Juicy Lucy, a hamburger stuffed with cheese, on a TV program featuring a bar in St. Paul. On TV, the cheese oozed out of the burger as soon as you bit into it. My Sister’s Place’s Juicy Lucy was made with ½ pound of hamburger. No human being needs that much hamburger in one meal. Jane and I split one. It came with fries and pickles.

Juicy Lucy with fries and pickles

And not much cheese. Look closely. It’s visible, but hardly an ooze.

Where's the cheese?

Still, I would go there again. Maybe order something else, though.

We went back to the cabin and put the jigsaw together again. We switched sides, so Jane did the ship’s sails, and I did the lantern. And that wrapped up a day where things generally didn’t go as planned.

Friday, August 12

Our last day was low key. Our goals for the last day are always the same: 1) don’t go anywhere in the car, 2) eat/drink everything in the refrigerator, and 3) pack.

It was a beautiful morning.

A perfect morning on Hungry Jack Lake

After a breakfast of eggs and stuff with the last pieces of bacon, we went out in the boat. This is the view of the dock and cabin from the lake.

The dock from the lake with the cabin barely visible among the trees

Usually, we head around to the east side of the lake. Today we went to the west. We thought this odd little platform was probably built for loons. Eagles are a problem for loon chicks, so the nesting platforms need to have something over the top to keep the eagles from swooping down.

A loon nesting platform, complete with reflector. Very fancy.

We had quesadilla with leftovers for lunch. It was reminiscent of working in Commons during my college days. You may have heard the food service maxim “when in doubt, throw it out.” In Commons it was “When in doubt, put it in enchiladas.”

The afternoon brought the sad task of packing up. We returned our life jackets to the office and paid our bill. I got Terry a new hat, as per his request. He likes Boundary-Waters-themed hats.

We grilled marinated round steak and a foil pack of the rest of the sweet corn and potatoes. We also ate the rest of the vegetables and drank the last bottle of wine.

Thus ended vacation for another year.