Month: August 2023

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.