Grand Marais, Minnesota, is a small tourist town with a population of about 1,400…… with motels, cabins and lodges for the outdoors enthusiasts who are drawn to the hiking, fishing and lake activities in the area.
The local Dairy Queen has an outdoor fire pit – much easier to enjoy one’s Blizzard when one’s toes are warm.
No trip for us is complete without a visit to the local thrift store – concerned about the increasingly cold weather to come, Henry and I each got a cast-off jacket, average cost about $16 each; Raider got a brand-new coat that set us back $47!
Of course, we are still in America, full of the die-hard faithful. This fellow roamed around town periodically, with no one paying the slightest attention.
Instead, folks (mostly old folks) were rocking out to a band (also well-seasoned) that was playing along the harbor.
(This is the end of the season. Younger people, with the exception of the random grandchild, were no doubt in school or at work.)
Another local character built, over a few years, a fabulous work of art promoting world peace, called Harmony on 61 (61 being the highway that runs along the north shore). An agglomeration of driftwood, stone and “found” items, it runs several hundred feet along the highway in front of his home (seen here from the air)……
An astounding and creative installation, with woodland creatures, human relics and stone cairns carefully arranged together.
Most people love it or detest it. We are among the admirers.
One more post is to come from our time in Grand Marais…. aerial shots from flights in the powered parachute.
How many people carefully plan a vacation, picking out just the right hotel, scheduling around the best weather, reserving the most desirable activities, etc. – only to be foiled by circumstances beyond their control – a transit strike, Covid shutdown, an unseasonable storm, a family emergency. And what they had hoped and planned for is largely lost.
How lucky we are to have the time to wait out obstacles that may be placed in our way. Weather was not so good in Grand Marais upon our arrival, and we just managed to secure a rare pet-friendly motel room. We spent the next couple of rainy days scoping out the area, and found an ideal situation – a small dog-friendly lodge, adjacent to a lake, some ATV trails and – best of all – an abandoned airstrip! We booked it for five nights and then providence stepped in with a glorious sunny day with little wind. Let’s fly!
Here is a clip shortly after take-off, me bumbling with the camera while Henry gets the wind under control…..
Here’s the old airstrip we used, which ran alongside the Skyport Lodge on the bank of Devil Track Lake, about six miles outside town.
Here’s the lodge from the lakeside….
Just a perfect day for a flight. Once again, pardon the camera work – but we were excited to see a bald eagle flying alongside us for a while (watch carefully)…
Grand Marais from the air, with its pretty little harbor.
Flying along the lake shore….
A couple of beauty shots.
Our return approach to Devil Track Lake…
A couple more lake shots, as we wing overhead and think about landing.
Although we saw few people on the ground, the reverse was not true. Apparently a number of residents noticed our flyover, sparking a flurry of interest on Facebook and a visit from Dan, who used to be a professional pilot, formerly owned the lodge and coincidentally lived next door to it. We ate at the lodge with him one night, and he invited us to his home for dinner the next….
Dan’s a great guy, and we hope that our paths will cross again.
(We did fly again while in Grand Marais, but fog obscured Superior…. a nice flight but not so many good photo ops….)
In case you noticed the surge in entries posted over the last few days, I am getting caught up as once again we are lying low while we wait for a rain system to pass through……
Canada opened to vaccinated travelers from the US on August 1. Entry is conditioned upon uploading passport and vaccination data in the Arrive Canada app no more than 72 hours before arriving at the border, along with results from a negative molecular test, also administered within 72 hours of arrival.
Only one clinic in Grand Marais offered Covid testing on a limited basis….. with no guarantee about the timing of results. We decided to take a chance, and arrived to sign up at 6:30 am on the date we wanted to be tested – a Tuesday, in hopes that we would get results soon enough to gain entry on Friday morning.
Luckily, there were few applicants on that day (they only test up to 10 per day), so we signed up and later drove through the hospital emergency bay for our test…..
Hooray! Our tests came back negative on Wednesday, so we headed to the border at Pigeon River, Ontario on Friday. An eerie experience – no one else at the border…. our paperwork was all in order, and we breezed through with only a few extra questions about our plans, how much booze we had and whether we had firearms or pepper spray. (Please note: pepper spray is not allowed, but pepper spray with a drawing of a bear on the can is….. since it then magically becomes bear spray, very important for campers in the wild.)
Entrants to Canada may also be selected randomly for follow-up testing, but we were not.
The visitors center across the border was also creepy-empty, with crime-scene tape stretched across the brochure racks and chairs, and a lonely masked agent behind the desk who sold us a map.
Ontario restaurants opened up to in-house dining on September 22, with restrictions.
All you have to do to eat out here is…… show proof of vaccination and photo identification. And then you complete a form with your phone number and email address for potential contact tracing…..
and voila! You are seated 2 meters from other diners and allowed to proceed with a meal!
Nobody seems to be complaining. Masking requirements are displayed at the door to virtually every indoor public place, including stores, motels, restaurants, gas stations, etc. and everybody complies. Easy-peasy….
It’s so refreshing, and we feel so much safer knowing that others are taking the same public health precautions we have.
Another of so many reasons to love Canada and the Canadians…..
On the subject of food….. I am delighted to have found a source for healthful dehydrated food. Truth be told, however, it does not look nearly as appetizing as it tastes….
(We’re not always at our best either, coiffure-wise.)
Be warned that my new resources (Outdoor Herbivore and Food for the Sole) provide mostly plant-based foods that have a shelf life of only a year or two, so probably not so good for any of you carnivorous preppers out there who are anticipating an extended siege.
We do have a refrigerator and hot plate, so also carry fresh fruit, snacks, yogurt, cheese, and of course beer and wine to sustain us on the road.
Many eating establishments in the rural areas have already closed for the winter season…. those that are open have extremely limited selections…. The usual hamburgers with the occasional fried walleye from the lake.
I personally was very excited to find an indoor restaurant near Wawa, Ontario that had a lovely menu, and cloth napkins…..not just cloth, but damask! (With a tablecloth and metal eating utensils, too!)
In Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, an Indian restaurant had a very special dish on the menu…….. okra! Nicely prepared in a masala sauce with fresh garlic naan…..
Would any trip to Canada be complete without sampling the national dish? Poutine, a nasty mess of french fries, brown gravy and cheese curds. What the heck – may as well go ”whole hog”, as they say – with the addition of smoked meat, bacon and a fried mac-and-cheese ball!
Even the most daring gourmand has to admit defeat from time to time, to the benefit of our canine friend.
(As you might notice – getting caught up after a few days without internet…… more later!)
From our entry to Canada, we followed along the Superior north shore, through Thunder Bay, a ghost town called Jackfish, Nipigon, Wawa, Lake Superior Provincial Park and finally to Sault Ste Marie. When the weather was rainy and cold, we stayed in small motels along the way, like this one in Nipigon:
No frills, no food, but clean with fairly good phone and internet service.
Camping at places like this one near the railroad tracks…
Picking rocks at every opportunity and in every gravel pit or pullout on the lake….
No decent agate specimens, but many, many stones have been gathered…… hundreds of pounds, in fact. The salvaged collecting bucket, alas, didn’t quite make it…..
We finally got to Sault Ste. Marie at the eastern-most end of the lake….
….. looked over into Michigan….
…. and decided we just weren’t ready to return to the USA just yet. So we turned east, leaving the lake behind for now.
A turn to some pretty weather brought us to this campground near the Spanish River….
Our first night there was so cold, Raider was called into service as a heating source…..
But things soon warmed up for some 4-wheeling….
A last night and early morning in camp before moving on…..
We are now in Sudbury, Ontario, waiting out still more rain and contemplating the next move. Do we press on to New Hampshire for possible powered parachute activity? Turn back and cover the Lake Superior south shore? Or strike out toward the American southwest and find some more hospitable weather?
With more bad weather pending and many facilities closed for the winter season, we decided to return to the USA and the south shore of Superior. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is a distinctive region with a lot of local pride. The folks here are known as Yoopers (Upper Peninsula = UP = Yoop, for those of you who, like me, needed the connection).
The Keweenaw Peninsula is the big finger of land that sticks up from the south shore into the Lake. Notable historic landmarks here include….
Deepest snowfall ever recorded east of the Rockies – 390.4 inches in the 1978-79 season!
Hard for us folks from the southland to imagine.
Also hard to believe that Michigan had its own space program, launching a rocket from this site at the farthest point of the peninsula in 1971!
The rustic log inn where we stayed was a Depression-era project of the WPA in the 1930s, providing employment to folks who lost their jobs in the local mining industry…..
Lots of hiking trails will soon become snowmobile heaven……
The hunt for the elusive agate continues….. in the gravel pits, on the beaches, in the streambeds, hills and parking lots, and on the face of this sandy cliff face in a biting wind.
Raider never loses faith in the endeavor, always alert for a discovery….
To be fair, agates are hard to come by… some people are convinced that the locals collect the most and best rocks in spring and early summer for resale to visitors. Many of the stores are out of stock as well….. one of them resorted to simply showcasing an artist’s rendering of the elusive material.
Henry finally negotiated a deal with the crusty character who owns Prospector’s Paradise, a large rock shop…
In exchange for some franklinite, a mineral that Henry brought along for trade, he got to pick about 50 pounds of agate material from their stock…..
Not as good as discovering them in the wild oneself, but it was fun going through the pile…. and Henry will have lots of raw material to slice and polish!
Weather over the lake changes frequently and quickly, with beautiful long vistas that show what is coming.
The weather finally gave us a generous snow storm, which we chose to ride out at a charming B&B in Ironwood…..
The proprietor of the property, as luck would have it, has a bakery business called Yooper Delights, and she was generous in providing us with decadent goodies, like these warm almond scones.
What else do you feed a Yooper? Well, their culinary claim to fame is the pasty (rhymes with nasty, but that is not a fair descriptor of the taste.) It’s basically pie crust stuffed with potatoes, a little carrot, onion and often some meat… but mostly potatoes. They are fun to eat, but pretty bland….. a little chili sauce helps.
Back on the home front, Henry’s son Clay was alarmed/horrified/galvanized when he saw the following photo on the wildlife camera on Henry’s property that they use to keep an eye on things….. Fire!
A storm knocked over a tree that fell on a power line…. sparks ignited some of the dry pine needles and low brush. Fortunately, the fire did not reach any of the structures on the property, so the house, barn and wood shed are all untouched; however, several acres were burned, and metal animal sculptures and Corvairs were scorched. We’re very lucky that Clay was on the lookout and damage was limited!
Wisconsin presented the final stretch of lakeshore for our Lake Superior circuit; we covered it fairly quickly. The only sight of note was this wonderful mural on the side of a grocery story in Ashland, Wisconsin.
…… So our circuit of Gitche Gumee has come to an end. Headed south with close to a half ton of rocks loading down every niche and crevice of the truck and trailer, we will nonetheless travel fairly quickly through the midwest toward Texas.
Our next planned undertaking will begin in February….. traversing South America, then across the Atlantic for a long sojourn in southern Africa.
Our fervent hope is that the world will continue to battle the coronavirus with all the weapons at its disposal, with nations cooperating and sharing generously to end this devastating pandemic.
We wish you a healthy and happy holiday season. Let’s take care of the planet and each other, and rest well at the end of the day.
We have been luckier than most during the past year’s shutdown – lots of remote outdoor space in which to do things. Henry has been busier than the proverbial one-armed paperhanger with projects around the property….. Robbie has struggled to find productive things to do.
Our new partner in isolation is Raider the dog, who was kindly loaned to us by Henry’s son Cliff, wife Laura and family. He has been a fantastic companion……
This post will highlight some of the other creatures that have been a part of our lives during the pandemic.
Birds….. lots of them, lured by the copious amounts of seed set out in feeders and perhaps some of the protection provided by structures near the house. Here a nest of baby wrens hatched in a nook in the carport.
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A little owl considered building a nest in the porch rafters, but was later scared off by Henry’s energetic power-washing…..
Bluebirds came early in the spring to take a quick bath…..
From the reptile group, this chicken snake threatened the baby wrens; fashionable farmer Henry rescued them…
A coral snake curled up on a boulder in the woods….
Baby copperhead hibernating…..
And what a showdown between two little lizards!
What could all that be about? Oooooooh, here’s the prize……
Mammals, too, have passed through our neck of the woods. Encounters include a couple of skunks, with unfortunate outcomes all around.
A lonely little opossum was lucky enough to be simply relocated.
Not so lucky….. the armadillo that Raider dispatched.
And a curse on the feral hogs! Henry put up an electrified fence around the main part of the property, but this little marauder and a few of his friends wandered into the meadow in full daylight. He will root no more.
Hope you all were able to hold it together with some happiness and hope through the last year. Signs are pointing to better times soon, with the rollout of the vaccine and a ramping down of violent political discord.
Future posts will look back at some of our other activities over the past year……
Meant to include a few more animal photos in the last post…. including this lovely butterfly that took a ride on Henry’s jeans.
A striking catalpa worm and his friends made short work of the leaves on the catalpa tree.
And moles are burrowing away under the yard. Henry has been pursuing them, almost like Bill Murray in Caddyshack…. short of blowing up the meadow. They are intriguing little critters, albeit destructive.
Of course, one of the reasons the mole is not welcome is that it interferes with landscaping/agricultural activities. Like so many, the enforced isolation led us to plant a fairly ambitious garden, a portion of which is shown here.
Beans, purple hull peas, tomatoes, squash, watermelon, cantaloupe, peppers, eggplant, radishes, pears and okra…… some of it in great abundance.
At its peak, the summer squash yielded as much as 11 pounds…… IN ONE SINGLE DAY!
In this household, wasting food is a sacrilege. The challenge, therefore, is how to use all of this fresh produce. Pickled squash, grilled squash, fried squash, squash fritters, squash soup, steamed squash, squash casserole (several recipes), dried squash, squash chips, roasted squash, squash bread, anyone?
Food was prepared and consumed with a sense of urgency while the next batch ripened. Of course, we gave quite a lot of it away…… once friends and family had had enough, other beneficiaries included Henry’s hired helpers, the local food bank, the UPS driver, and our postmistress, Sharon.
Here’s an action shot of the pea-shelling operation, which Henry precariously but effectively rigged…
We even grew sprouts and mushrooms on the kitchen counter….
The prize for best use of home-grown produce, however, goes to this very effective incorporation of pickled okra……. into a Bloody Mary!
A large landscape operation began in the fall with clearing the meadow in order to sow some new seed. The house overlooks the area, which is about 5 to 6 acres, slightly rolling and lightly wooded. Henry spent the better part of two weeks on the back of a tractor, tilling and reworking the turf….. even repetitively rolling a huge log across it to redistribute and smooth the soil. (Photo courtesy of the motion-activated game camera.)
Here is the result…… neat as a pin…. (this is a panorama shot with the house visible to the left.)
We spent a lot of time selecting what we wanted to grow. One area was sown with a mix of wild grasses and flowers native to this area; another strip near the house, wildflowers and micro clover; and across the rest, oats to feed the deer during the winter, with crimson and white clovers and a mix of about 20 different low-growing wildflowers.
The weather was dry and uncooperative at first; eventually, however, Mother Nature gave things a boost and we are off to a nice, albeit patchy, start.
Two arctic blasts passed through in January and February, with unprecedented cold and thick blanketings of snow!
Perspectives are a bit off from one photo to the next, but you get the idea.
Speaking of arctic blasts, just a couple of bits from that experience. Here is the electrical wire along the driveway to our house, inoperative due to heavy ice (and downed lines elsewhere in the area)….
Henry’s nearby son and his family were stuck without power or generator. We picked up and conveyed a generator through the night along remote roads to the rescue! A beautiful and spooky experience. Had to stop several times for Henry to cut down obstructive fallen branches with a chainsaw.
The birds were voracious…. and ate about 110 pounds of seed in just over a week. Here they are feeding. One tries to fly through the door to the warmth of the house!
Ice formed on every surface, including this baby pine tree that bent over in defeat…
Our wildlife camera yielded lots of photos of deer, coyotes…. and hogs. The former will hop over the new electric fence, but maybe the gal in the photo below will be fearful.
Hopeful that this spring will bring delight and color……. just a few of the flowers that have peeked out so far.
As a builder and forester, Henry has found time during the pandemic year to take on many projects around the property……
Here he is with his sidekick Isadoro pouring concrete for the floor of the wood shed.
Looks like fun, but this process took many hours of planning, preparation and execution.
Cutting down dead or dying trees is exciting, but also requires judgment and experience to insure that the tree falls in the right direction, rather than crushing a bystander or the pump house….. (This one accidentally took out the zip line.)
The woods surrounding the house ideally get burned once a year, to cut down on the undergrowth and promote a nicer environment for the deer and human inhabitants. This usually takes place near dusk, as the wind drops and falling temperatures and rising humidity keep the well-planned flames under control. Quite a beautiful sight.
And I helped!
(My contribution to the effort included monitoring the progress of the conflagration and clearing straggling fingers of flame – called catch-outs – in addition to having a beer when all was said and done.)
Henry fulfilled a long-held dream of renting a cherry-picker so that he could prune surrounding trees himself. This scheme went temporarily awry when he got stuck about 60 feet up in the air – with night falling, cold encroaching and me unable to figure out how to operate the mechanism that would bring him back to earth.
(Son Clay came to the rescue…. eventually.)
Many of you know that Henry is a rock hound, and typically brings many pounds of rock, sand, dirt, and other geological specimens home from our trips. Significant investments were made in rock-polishing equipment to enhance some of these treasures. Henry added a sound-proofed room on to the barn to muffle the constant roar!
I engaged in a few homely pursuits in addition to the challenge of processing and preparing bushels of home-grown bounty. A couple of knitting projects (the second one stalled a bit, but still under way)….
An obsession with Japanese ramen led to some experiments, and a modest on-line spree to find the right kind of bowls…..
Leisure time included flights in the powered parachute when our schedules and the weather cooperated. The video shows birds on nearby Lake Nacogdoches.
The homestead from the air….. and a sunset over the lake (from ground level).
Time for relaxation …..
(Henry is enjoying the massage chair we had to have after experiencing them on our trip to Japan. Delighted that we got it – almost every night we each get a treat. If you have room in your house, it is well worth the investment, especially for creaky old people!)
Granddaughter Lily helped with some personal grooming…..
Tragedy struck one night after dark on a July evening. I was rounding the house briskly after a 4-wheeler outing and tripped over a garden gnome that Henry had positioned in the yard to cover up a piece of pipe that he feared someone would trip over. Yow!
(Trust me – this evil ogre is invisible at twilight. Dog added for scale.)
My wrist was surgically repaired with a plate and pins that I will carry forever more. All better now!
Like everyone, we had a chance to do a few Zoom meetings.
We are still working on our Zoom skills…..
Alarmed over speculation that there might be attempts to interfere with the voting process in the US presidential election in November, we volunteered with the nonpartisan Election Protection program. Our role included monitoring several polling stations in Nacogdoches and providing information to voters about the process and eligibility.
Raider helped too. We saw not a scintilla of evidence of fraud!
….. And that’s it! Our pandemic year in 4 blog installments.
We are now fully vaccinated against the virus. Still want to know what that will mean in the near and medium term, anxious to get out in the world again. We are resigned to the wait, and will be embarking on more agricultural efforts this summer. The next blog post will look at those preparations. Stay well and positive!
Around the World Again 