Wayward Rambling

We drove out to Denver over Annabelle’s spring break. We planned to spend a couple days with her cousin Hannah and her uncle Matt and aunt Karly. Leaving after work Friday, we split the drive into two days. We spent the night in Des Moines, IA. We arrived in Denver ahead of schedule on Saturday. Matt made us steak for dinner.

Our first full day was Sunday. We went to Meow Wolf in Denver. A google search describing it turns up the following “What is it? Meow Wolf: Convergence Station is a massive, 90,000 square foot narrative art exhibition built around the concept of quantum travel.” I would describe it as a post apocalyptic environment. The place is fairly large, with people in costume and a handful of stories to walk through. We met a teller who gave Hannah a prize. She also sent Annabelle on a quest. AB had to find a woman in black robes near the Castle and hand her a crystal. When we found her the woman told us the crystal was from the wall nearby.

We ate lunch at Briar Common Brewery + Eatery. Then we headed to Red Rocks. I have been to Denver a few times. I always wanted to go to Red Rocks but hadn’t been there yet. We had to hike a bit from our parking spot to get there. We didn’t see a concert but we got to walk around the stadium. It’s built into a natural amphitheater in a rock formation. We got to dance around on stage. The cousins played a game of tag. We took photos. We walked to the top of the stadium seats. You can see the city of Denver in the background from the top. On our way home we stopped at the Colorado Creamery for ice cream. The ice cream really hit the spot, it was very creamy and tasty.

We went to see Lake Superior. It reminded us of Ireland at the Berran because of the rocky shore. They had cool picnic tables made up both rocks and logs cut in half. We stopped at Silver Creek Cliff Tunnel walkway. I was a little nervous going across the bridge here.

We saw Two Harbors Lighthouse from the outside. We ate a gyro and hot dogs and fries at Coney Island Deluxe. Then we stopped at the train museum and rode the narrated train. The train museum was definitely worth a visit. They had a large assortment of engines and train cars. We were even able to go inside them.

We ate pop tarts this morning while we waited for our tent to dry. Then, we broke camp. It took us two hours of paddling with the wind and portaging to get back to the outfitters. We took the river to Sawbill.

We returned our gear. On our way out, the outfitter mentioned he’d like to hear how our trip went. So we met up with him to give him an update.

We drove to Goose Berry Falls. We stopped to see Split Rock Lighthouse on the way. We saw the upper falls. Thenw e set up our tent to dry before pitching it. We showered.

We went out to dinner at the Grand Superior Grill. It’s a resort with a restaurant. They had a giant bolo ball game on the lawn in front. So we played for a bit. We came back to camp and saw the middle and lower falls. Hardly anyone was out after dinner which made the experience that much more enjoyable. The falls were handicap accessible. They have both switchbacks and stairs to get down to see them. Then we had a campfire and went to bed.

The girls let me sleep in until 9:15 am for my birthday today. When I woke up, they sang “Happy Birthday” to me. Today we paddled North on Kelso. The first campsite we saw was vacant. We decided to stop and check out all the vacant campsites we came across. I would argue that while there is not a single bad campsite in the boundary waters, some are certainly better than others. The second campsite further North was also vacant. Both of those sites were pretty awesome but we liked ours a bit better.

We had a hell of a time paddling back due to the wind. We tried to stay on the calmest side of the lake. Kelso itself is a very small lake that is not wide at all. We came up to a choke point in the lake. The lake gets narrow between a slightly wider section both before and after this choke point.

The wind was funneling into this choke point. We tried to paddle through it but we couldn’t. Our canoe had a tendency to stay out of the eye of the wind. So we seemed to tack back and forth between starboard and port fighting our way windward. I wasn’t sure what we were going to do. We pulled the canoe to the shore on one side to assess.

I debated trying to walk the canoe along the shore but it wasn’t my first choice. We made another attempt. Everyone was paddling with all their might. Annabelle normally doesn’t paddle all the time. But when she knows we need every bit of help we can get, she is happy lend her efforts. On our second attempt after our brief rest, I am glad to say we made it past that choke point.

We came home and swam for a bit. Dinner tonight was a bit earlier than usual. We ate spam and ramen. We split an astronaut mint ice cream sandwich for dessert. Our weather radio forecasted a storm. So we pumped water and had a brief fire before the storm. During the storm we played cards in the tent as it rained. The weather radio actually warned there was a possibility of tornadoes. Luckily they did not come to fruition. After the storm we had a second dinner. We ate cold rice and beans along with smoked salmon and granola.

For breakfast this morning Linda had yogurt. Annabelle and I had pop tarts. We portaged to Alton and planned on finding a campsite for lunch. We wanted to swim there. As we paddled around the lake, all the campsites were full. We stopped to snack for lunch and pump water on an island on the south end of the lake. I made a game time decision to stop when I saw the island. My butt had been killing me from sitting in the canoe and paddling for so long. Alton is a large lake.

There was a bit of wind on Alton so we stayed along the shoreline to avoid it as best we could. When we came back to camp, we ate noodles with chicken and stuffing for dinner. We celebrated my birthday a day early today with cinnamon apple crisp. Linda and Annabelle tried to start eating until I reminded them to sing “Happy Birthday” to me.

We saw a ton of dragonflies around the campfire around sunset tonight. It was much warmer tonight compared to other nights. They must have been feeding on the mosquitoes. Every other night we were here, it was much colder. The mosquitoes aren’t out when its cool at night. We did get a bit of rain too.

For breakfast today we rehydrated freeze dried baby yogurt. We crushed the yogurt before we left and packed it in ziplock bags with dehydrated fruit and granola. Today we did a day trip from Kelso. We brought our smaller food bag containing snacks for lunch along with one portage bag.

We canoed through the Kelso River and portaged to Sawbill. We swam from a campsite on Sawbill. We ate lunch at the campsite. We initially planned on portaging to Smoke Lake which is further east. We were pretty sure we found the portage. Linda headed down the portage. This one is 100 rods. The other three portages – between Sawbill, Alton and Kelso were all much shorter, between 10-30 rods.

Linda didn’t make it all the way to Smoke and turned back. Annabelle and I were waiting in the canoe for her to assess the situation. We looked at the time and decided against Smoke because we were concerned about how much daylight we had left. We went back to Kelso through the river portage.

For dinner we had rice and beans with salmon. We also had a backpackers pantry meal of jerk chicken, rice and beans. Annabelle and I pumped water while Linda cooked and cleaned the dishes. Of all the backpacking chores, Linda’s least favorite is pumping water. So AB and I always did that before and after dinner.

Our last dive of the trip was today. We did a boat dive at Forty Foot Point. We looked around the mooring line and saw a shrimp. He was in a shell. We also saw a lobster that was carrying eggs. The lobster was hiding on a wall of coral. After we came over the wall, we were at a point where the current brings a lot of food into the reef. This attracted tons of fish that swam around us.

For the drop dive we dropped at CoCo View Wall. Andy spotted a lobster all on his own. I was very proud of finding it. We burned up more air than we intended because I took my time looking for things and taking pictures. Linda moved on towards the Prince Albert wreck and I followed after her.

At the wreck, we checked to see if the turtle was on the bow. He was not. We also looked inside the ship a bit. I wanted to get a bit more adventurous with the ship than I was able to. However I was getting low on air. So we just popped in and out of a couple openings and called it good. One was horizontal and the other was vertical.

After our diving was done, we returned our gear and closed out our tabs. We picked up a bracelet with a sea turtle on it for our daughter Annabelle. We tried to get the data for our dives off of the computers. We found that we should have done that after each day of diving. It was too much to expect to do it with the few minutes we had at the time. We met our boat captain and dive master to give them their gratuity. We also left an envelope for the rest of the workers who are in a tip pool.

We did an excursion to see sloths and monkeys. The monkeys would jump on us and climb over us. We were in a large cage with them. The cage was big enough for eight people to be inside of it. We got to hold a sloth and take a picture with it. There was also a very large bird cage with macaw parrots inside it. The parrots would sit on us for a photo/video.

When we did our briefing this morning on the boat this morning, David and Richard said they were giving us a gift. They would take us on two boat dives. The dives we did were Calvin’s Crack and Mary’s Place. Both of these dives had a coral formation where there was a crevasse between two tall walls of coral. I rented a camera before we took off on the boat. So we have some nice photos of these dives. At Calvin’s Crack we saw a bearded toad fish. He didn’t move much at all, he just sat in his hole. At Mary’s place we saw a black striped sea horse.

In the afternoon we did another boat dive. We dove French Cay Cut. For the drop dive we dropped at Nelson’s Wall.

Before dinner there was a hermit crab race. Linda and I each picked out a crab to enter. They cost $1 each and the winner keeps the price. Today there were 30 crabs entered. The crabs are dumped in the middle of a circle. The first three crabs out of the circle enter the final round. The winner of that round takes the prize. Neither of us won but it was fun regardless.

We did another night dive. We discovered that the current is much worse using a snorkel at the surface compared to a regulator. We went to the bow of the Prince Albert where we found a very large sea turtle. We then went down to Nelson’s Wall and turned back.