·:[ high hopes gardens ]:·
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The last few days of the trip were more rain than sun.

The high the last full day was supposed to be 80 degrees, but it struggled to reach 60.

A little rain doesn’t stop the kids from going outside - otherwise it’s time to snuggle up to a board game or deck of cards and be thankful we’re not in a tent in an all-day rain.

The sunset brought a ray of clearing on the last evening.

The final official vacation act is a stop at the Tower Cafe, amazingly enough, located in Tower, MN for a final breakfast on the way back home.  The cross-winds were strong on the way home, so with the canoe on top of the van, we couldn’t truck along at 70 mph, so it was a slower-than-usual trip home, but as trips home from vacation go now that the kids are older, it wasn’t even close to the longest ride home.

one year ago…”BWCA Trip”

The last few years we’ve been sending a crew of four for an overnight and two long days away from the cabin.  This year it was the moms and younger girls who set out. It seems more to the way of the wilderness to go with a smaller party, rather than dragging 9 people on one outing.

Canoes all packed, ready to embark on the trip.

The portage is where the young girls show their mettle - here Kate is carrying the Duluth Pack from one lake to the next over a trail.  This was the first year that Emma carried the canoe by herself on a portage as well!

Trip leaders extraordinaire Linda and Lori congratulate themselves on raising girls to the helpful portage age.

Emma readies the bear tree rock - ready to heave it over a high branch to store the food pack high off the ground and away from hungry black bears.

Once camp is set, it’s time to relax and take in some sunshine and solitude.

Morning comes early sleeping on the ground, but having other grounds along perks up the morning.

The channel between Lake Two and Lake Three (there are evidently so many lakes, they grew tired of naming them, or ran out of names).

A morning paddle break and consulting the maps for progress on the journey back to the cabin.

A new canoe this year for Kate and Lori to paddle - along with our black Bell - they were dubbed salt and pepper on the trip, even though ours is named “leech.”

Linda at the helm, maneuvering the canoe back home.

one year ago…”Soudan Underground Mine Tour”

An important component to vacation is adapting to life on the dock.

The dock is a great place to be as it is a good place to watch the world go by - it’s usually a bit breezier (less buggy), and a place to watch bobber and read a book.  Over the years, there has been a steady escalation in discovery and procurement of the ultimate dock chairs.

The trade-offs are portability vs ability of chair to withstand wind and not blow into the lake.  This chair is firmly anchored to the dock!

One day when the younger girls and moms were out on an overnight, we looked at our map and decided we’d try to get to a location up a series of rapids and pools to another lake. There was not a trail or portage between these lakes, which is rare - we thought “how bad can it be?” and especially if we weren’t in a hurry or had a lot of gear, we could find our way over land or water and find the remote fishing hole that receives few, if, any visitors.  Here Martin catches his breath after we bushwhack over the first group of rapids, paddle over a short pool and try to plot the next rapids, whether it would be better to drag the canoes up the rapids, or make a path over land.

The water path was not very feasible - long stretches of inches-deep water flowing over a bed of boulders.  The over land path was not much better - stretches of mud interrupted by steep rocky ledges all along a winding stream with thick growth.  We tried for an hour or so before resigning ourselves to the obvious fact that there was a perfectly good reason there was not a portage trail between these two lakes in this location.

We brought some gorp (good old raisins and peanuts) along for a snack which the kids enjoyed on the adventure.

one year ago…”Blueberries for More than Sal!”

Another popular vacation pastime is fishing.

This year we added a minnow seine to our list of stuff to drag up to the cabin.  By all accounts it was a wildly successful venture as we were able to catch as many minnows as we needed.  In past years, if we wanted minnows after the first 2-3 days, we’d have to fetch them in town, 23 miles away, so we often went without.

Marty and I quickly got the hang of the seine net and scooped up no where near our limit of 24 dozen!  It made catching the bait almost as much fun as catching the fish.

Not all the fish are this big!  Here is a tough decision between taking off a fish or eating a smore!

One evening we paddled out to a rocky, treeless island and fished in the middle of the lake.  One of Martin’s new lures gave him a thrill - he bought some impregnatedfishysmellingrubber crawdads and had the pleasure of a small pike jump out of the water to get his lure as he was lifting the crawdad out of the water.  I decided the rubbery crayfish was the perfect 7-year-old bait as it is equally alluring being reeled in or lying on the bottom when attention wanes.

Here I am modeling my new line of “Fidel Wear” as I realized all my clothes that day were olive green and brown, unofficial colors of the revloution.  Fishing was not great - probably caught about a dozen keepers.  We found that a snapping turtle found the docks to be an open buffet.

One day we caught some fish in the morning and a few hours later, all that was left were the fish heads on the stringer.  The next day, on a deeper dock and with us gone for just an hour for dinner, the turtle got another meal.  So, on the annual mid-week shopping run to Ely, I got one of the old fashioned collapsable steel mesh baskets to keep the fish in and officially closed the all you can eat buffet.

one year ago…”Fishing at Sunset”

Swimming is by far one of the highlights of the trip for the kids.

By the boathouse is a dock that is high off the water and most excellent for jumping into the lake both backwards…

and frontwards…

and with a goofy look on your face. The kids enjoy hours jumping into the water here.

I dragged Emma away from the lake long enough for a tortuous bike ride over the boulders, loose rock, and gravel of an old logging road that leads right from the cabin. We biked miles and never came to the end.

Some of the hills were very steep and Emma and I both took turns losing our grip on the trail near the bottom of steep hills that curved at the bottom.  We both came up uninjured.

The wild strawberries weren’t quite as large as the ones back home, but sure tasted good back deep in the woods on the bike ride.

one year ago…”Road Trip!”

Yesterday was a big travel day - 10 hours in the van to Kawishiwi Lodge only a few miles south of Canada, literally at the end of the road near Ely, MN.  We like the place as it is the only resort that sits on a BWCA Wilderness lake and therefore are no motorboats, jet skis, or even air traffic over the area.  The kids can swim in the lake and canoe without worrying about propellers or wakes.

Everyone thought the minivan is as sporty as it can look with the black canoe up on top.

Emma is eager with anticipation as she helps unload the canoe from the top of the van.

Here’s home for most of the week.

Cabin 10 has been our home the past few years since the kids grew up and it was harder to share a cabin with another family.

Linda unpacks the food inside the cabin.  Most of the lumber is cut and sawn right at the resort at the resort’s own sawmill.

one year ago…”Garlic Harvest Begins”

The last morning we leave early and stop about an hour down the road at the Tower Cafe for breakfast.

Notice Claire’s sense of humor on the shirt she and Emma bought together. Written in upside down letters, “If you can read this, pull me back into the canoe!”

one year ago…

The pictures today are courtesy of Claire - a few shots she took over the week.

Here I am in what we affectionately call “Lake One and a Half” a small body of water between the two portages that connect from Lake One to Lake Two.

Pure bliss for a six-year old is throwing rocks and sand without anybody telling you to stop!

It seems we spend a good amount of our day on the docks - reading, fishing, or swimming.  Yes, you can fish all around the lake and get skunked and then come home and catch walleyes off the dock while reading a book!

All the kids like to go to the big dock near the boathouse and jump into the water.

one year ago…

In the afternoon, a series of storms blew in.  We were taken aback, when paddling in the rain squalls in the 65 degree weather, to have a bolt of lightning seemingly appear out of nowhere (it didn’t seem like thunderstorm weather as it had been raining off an on all day and cold).  We quickly skeedaddled to the nearest shoreline and used the time to have lunch.  By the time we finished there were no further bolts, so we continued into Lake Three.

Here’s my “magazine cover” shot near our campsite on Lake Three.  Just an hour or so before this, we had already found a campsite as it looked like unstable weather continued to approach, so we abandonded plans to go further.  It was a good decision as there was about three hours of lightning and intermittent rain after we had camp set up.  Some other folks out on a trip sought shelter in our campsite as they were out and some didn’t have rain gear, they had no shelter, so we perched them under a tarp we set up for a few hours.  Amazingly, we saw many parties paddling across the lake during the lightning storm, betting the bolts would not hit them.

The night before, we instruct the girls on the finer points of hanging the food pack in the air, to make it harder for critters, large and small, to get the food back overnight.

Here are the girls after a squall moved through.  Shortly before this, we could hear a big wind coming at us far off in the woods, and with a bit of trepidation listened as it moved closer.  When the crescendo of windswept trees intersected with our campsite, we could see out on the lake a section where the wind actually lifted water off the surface of the lake and danced it around up in the air.

Some woodland flowers in bloom.  If my northland botany is still trustworthy - I think these are called pippsissewa.

one year ago…

Today, we left for an overnight trip in the BWCA with the two dads and two oldest girls.  Next year the two younger girls and Moms will go out from the cabin.

Here we are set for departure under sunny skies and great anticipation to continue the girls along the path of wilderness camping.

Clouds move in on route and scattered sprinkles bring out the rain gear.  The temperature is in the low 60s.

We were able to portage with one trip.  Claire double packed and I took the canoe.  This is on the portage between Lake One and Lake Two (there are so many lakes in Minnesota, they must have been tired of thinking of new names and this chain consists of Lakes 1, 2, 3, and 4.

The adolescent girls were especially proud of their portaging expertise when we were able to make it in one trip and the group of 8 men and boys needed two trips and 4-6 people to carry the canoes across.
 
One of the camp chores is cutting firewood, here in the rain for the evening campfire.

one year ago…

Today brought driving rain, strong winds and cold temperatures, so it was a good day to visit the underground mine in nearby Soudan.  It is now a state park and as part of the tour, you travel down the original mine elevators about a half-mile underground to the 27th level of the mine and then travel about 3/4 of a mile in a small train at the lowest level.

Here onlookers watch the drum and cable that hoist the elevator cars up and down the half-mile to the bottom.

Martin anxiously awaits the trip to the bottom during his last moments before heading underground.

Linda, a half-mile underground heading down even deeper in the mine.

 
Martin a bit more relaxed now that he is safely down to the 27th level.  The mine stopped operation in 1962 and produced very rich ore - 68%-72% iron. A 12 inch block of ore weighed 350 pounds.

There is now a physics lab at the bottom of the lab that is investigating the elementary nature of particles, shielded from the atmosphere by a half-mile of rock.

one year ago…

We tend to enjoy things on vacation that others might not think are enjoying!  Being the preserving/putting food away folks that we are, we bring canning jars along in case we get enough blueberries!

The blueberries this year were exceptional.  I had resigned myself to a bad year since there were fires earlier this spring and the whole arrowhead region was dry.  But the rains must have been well-timed for the blueberries.  The berries were large and plentiful.

We made sure to “eat local” even while on vacation!  We had fresh blueberry pancakes, blueberry muffins, blueberry cobbler and fried walleye.  In addition to all the blueberries we ate fresh, we brough home 24 half-pint jars of whole canned berries and many gallons more fresh to make jam and freeze.  I think we must have picked about 6 gallons of blueberries throughout the week.
one year ago…

Linda and I snuck off tonight to go canoeing and fishing.

Here she is on Lake One and I only wish her smile was because of the great mess of fish she was pulling in.  But being on the lake and having a moment when bugs aren’t around is reason enough to smile.  We paddled to the rapids that spill into Lake One and I was quite surprised not to catch any at the head, tail, back eddy or anywhere near the rapids.

The route back to the cabin is directly into the sunset and around the bend.
one year ago…

Yesterday, we endured the 11 hour trip from the farm to the northwoods of Minnesota.

Here are the kids the night before with the van all packed up and ready to roll.  Now, the parents get satellite radio and the kids get a portable DVD player to make the long journey much shorter than it used to be.

one year ago…