On the Road with Jan and George

We’re up at the crack of dawn and head back east toward the Badlands, stop to have breakfast at Wall Drug.  I order their biscuits and gravy which are really good, so I chat up the cook to find out how she makes them.  I’ll be doing some experimenting when we’re settled back in Costa Mesa.

We spend a few hours exploring Badlands National Park and have a beautiful sunshiny day to enjoy the park’s spectacular rock formations.  They’re reminiscent of what we’ve seen in Death Valley and elsewhere, but nevertheless unique.

The Badlands

When we stopped for lunch I was struck by the view out the restaurant’s picture windows, they looked like posters that had been hung on the walls.

Nice picture windows

One of the attractions in the park is a prairie dog city in an area which also hosts a herd of bison.  When we spot a bison I naturally get out of the car and start walking towards him to get some closer shots.  Jan, back in the car, becomes a bit concerned when the bison sits up and starts staring at me.  Although I’ve been carefully calibrating my relative distance to the animal and to the car, I settle for the photos I’ve taken and beat a retreat.

You lookin' at me??....................................................................................no, but I am.

Another part of the park has an area representing the tiny fraction of remaining prairie which used to cover a large part of the American Midwest – Jan seems to find the great expanse relaxing and inspiring.

Some remaining prairie.

We return to Rapid City on a county road and pass many ranches and farms, including some huge sunflower fields.  An odd thing about these sunflowers is that they’re all pointing directly away from the sun..

Sunflowers pointing away from the sun...???

We noticed this in other fields in the past couple of days, the flowers seem to all be pointing to the east, regardless of the time of day.  Aren’t sunflowers supposed to follow the sun?

The sink in our hotel room had gotten clogged this morning, we told Michelle at the desk and she promised she would have someone come look at it.  But when we get back this evening the sink is still filled with water and there hasn’t been any housekeeping done at all.  This is the last straw, we tell her we’re leaving, pack our bags and load up the car.  But where to go?

The Alex Johnson's roof sign...

We’d taken a walk in town yesterday evening and Jan had spotted a lovely old brick building housing the Alex Johnson Hotel.  Turns out it was built in 1928 by Mr. Johnson, a railroad magnate, and it’s hosted a regular Who’s Who of the rich and famous over the years, movies stars, politicians, industrial magnates.  It was also featured in Hitchcock’s 1959 movie “North by Northwest”, a large part of which is set in the nearby Mt. Rushmore monument, and this seals the deal for us movie buffs.  We call them and end up getting a room for not much more than the fleabag had been charging us.

...and its elegant lobby (that's Jan on the balcony).

It’s a beautiful and elegant old place with its fascinating history documented in many photos hanging everywhere.  We spot Dinosaur Hill from the hotel’s rooftop bar and enjoy our Manhattans. We also admire the neon sign on top of the South Dakota Stock Growers’ Association building just down the street.

Hi, ho Silver, Away!

The horse’s forelegs need some maintenance, but this is a perfect setting for our last night in Rapid City.

After leaving Pine Island Sunday morning we head west toward our first stop in Fargo, N.D.  We cross the Mississippi one last time, in the countryside outside of Grand Rapids.

One last crossing...

...of the Mighty River.

It’s quite beautiful, although it doesn’t look as “mighty” here as it did when we stopped to admire it in Hannibal, MO.

It turns out the motel where we’re spending the night is in Moorehead, just across the Red River from Fargo, so we haven’t actually yet left Minnesota.  But the next morning we cross the river into North Dakota and head south and west toward Rapid City.

Our route takes us through Mitchell, SD, the home of the “World’s Only Corn Palace”.  I’d been advised by friends to make sure to see it if we were in the neighborhood, so we stop to visit.  The building has every outside surface newly decorated each year with illustrations made of corn.

Corn Palace main entrance...every side looks like this!

Very corny.

It’s actually pretty impressive.  It has a large theater and a gift shop where, naturally, you can buy just about everything in the shape of corn, or made out of corn kernels, corn cobs, corn husks, corn stalks…well, you get the picture (pun intended).

We make one more stop in the town of Wall, about fifty miles outside Rapid City, to visit the famous Wall Drug Store.  Jan knew exactly what it was, I’d never heard of it.  But it’s kind of hard to miss once you’re in the neighborhood, there are signs along the highway for a hundred miles in both directions reminding you of everything they offer – as you get close they’re only a few hundred yards apart.

Can't miss Wall Drug.

The place began as a struggling pharmacy in the middle of nowhere at the start of the Depression, and the couple who owned it were discouraged at seeing all the automobile traffic drive by without stopping.  One hot summer day when they were close to giving up on the shop, the wife had the brilliant idea of putting up a sign on the road reading, “Free Ice Water”.  Cars began stopping, and the rest, as they say, is history.  The enterprise now covers an entire acre, has a courtyard with live entertainment, a mechanical bull and a Jurassic Park T. rex, lovely art work all over the place,  and it sells just about everything.

One of Wall Drug's many, many entrances.

They’ve also expanded quite a bit on their original highway advertising campaign, as you saw above.

I’ve miscalculated the distance and our drive is longer than we expected, and further delayed by our two stops we arrive at the Western Thrifty Inn in Rapid City not much before dark.  It turns out the motel is not quite the two-star facility that Orbitz had advertised, it’s a residence motel with groups of kids playing on the stairs and in the walkways, parents with limited access to dental care, and someone’s dinner cooking on a barbecue in the parking lot.  But the room looks OK, and we figure we can handle it for a couple of nights.  The place quiets down after dark, and we get a good night’s rest for an early start tomorrow morning to tour the Badlands.

Goodbye little cabin in the woods...

It’s time to say goodbye to the beautifully refinished little cabin and Pine Island – today is our last day, the end of our longest stay ever on Pine Island, over ten weeks.  Leaving Lake Vermilion is not easy, being here is like a drug which we don’t want to give up.  Several of our neighbors here have expressed exactly the same sentiment.  And there are new surprises every day, like the snowshoe hare who’s made himself pretty much at home in our front yard for the past ten days

New visitor.

He’s a remarkably brazen moocher, you have to get within eight feet of him before he’ll decide to leave the patch of grass he’s grazing.  But he won’t miss us.

We did our laundry in Ely yesterday and sorted out the clothes that are staying here in the footlockers under the bunk bed.  This morning we’ve packed our bags and put them in the Bayliner.  My last obligation is to make sure the property is prepared for winter.  I’ve checked with Ray to make sure there’s no chance he will be coming up after we leave, otherwise it would be his responsibility.

So here’s what needs to do be done:  Run the fuel out of the outboard motor on the fishing boat, take off the motor (it’s a heavy sucker!) and put it into the boathouse.  Drag the boat out of the water and hang it up on the side of the boat house – this is a bear to do alone, but not so bad as a two-man (or one-man, one-woman) job.

Padlock the shower house and boat house.  Go up to the outhouse and drain the recirculating toilet, padlock the door.  Turn off the water pump switch in the cabin, open the water taps in the kitchen to release the tank pressure, pour half a quart of antifreeze into the sink to protect the trap.  Go out to the well, open the check valve and make sure the water column is released; open the priming plug on the electric pump.  Crawl under the front of the cabin and remove the plastic cap on the T-connecter to let the water drain out of the line, the pump and the water heater.  This takes a while – remember to replace the cap.  Back in the cabin turn off the main electric switch in the breaker box.  Prop the refrigerator and freezer doors open, close and lock the back and front doors.

It’s all done and we’re ready to go – except for the traditional portrait on the cabin steps.

Jan and George, 2011

We head across the lake to Glenwood on this gorgeous, sunny morning.  Coming up to Glenwood we see the huge canopy Billy has put up on the lawn in front of the launching ramp.

Glenwood Lodge - it's close to party time.

An old friend of his is getting married on the dock on Monday and the reception will last all week, over a hundred guests are completely taking over the lodge.  While I was chatting with Billy a couple of days ago, part of the one hundred twenty cases and five kegs of beer were being delivered.  The pig that’s going to be roasted won’t arrive until later today.

Billy's new toy.

Billy recently got an iPhone and has been trying to figure out what it does and how to use it.  Preparing for the party has put major pressure on his technological skills.

We load everything into the Forester and turn the Bayliner over to Billy.  He’ll have it hauled out of the water today, winterized, and put into storage, he’ll need every inch of usable dock space he has for the wedding party.  And then we’re off, down Mud Creek Road, east on State 69 to Hibbing, on our way to Fargo.  No more Vermilion sunsets until next year.

One last sunset...

A boat trip around Pine Island is a requirement for any visitor, providing the weather permits.  It’s about a fifteen-mile ride which would take only half an hour without stops, but the south side of the island faces Big Bay where even moderately bad weather can build up huge swells and whitecaps, so we’re very cautious about sailing there.  A few days ago we packed sandwiches and drinks in the Bayliner and started off past Glenwood Lodge  heading around the east end of the island.  We stop to visit Betty Rouleau who has a house in Canfield Bay on the south side of the island (I’ll talk about Betty in a later post) and continue to Moccasin Point just off its western tip, where we have our lunch on a deck overlooking the water.

Lunch on the terrace at Moccasin Point

This  deck used to be part of a great bar that had been there forever, it served good food and was very popular with both locals and visitors.  But the property was put up for sale a few years ago and ended up being bought by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (the “DNR”), who turned it into a state campground.  It’s nice to have the campground there instead of its having been developed into condos and whatever, but we’re not alone in missing the bar.

Back in the Bayliner we thread a course west of St. Paul’s Island and east of St. Mary’s Island, and eventually through the narrow “S-curve” that takes us back to our neighborhood, the quiet north side.  Not far from the cabin we pass two families of loons whose territories are just a few hundred yards from each other.

Loons & chicks

What’s striking is that the two sets of chicks are obviously very different ages.  The pair closer to us (on the right) seem to have been very late in laying their eggs, this was the first we’ve seen of their chicks.   We get to watch this pair most nights when we’re out on the dock for sunset, and we had thought they weren’t going to have any young this year.

Visitors require entertainment and we’re very accommodating hosts, so on Monday we take Elizabeth and Mac along a trail off of Mud Creek Road to pick berries.

Into the woods, the woods, the woods...

Although the blueberry patch that had been so productive last year turns out to be pretty thin this year, we collect enough (in the hot sun!) for at least a few helpings of pancakes.  And the raspberries are abundant, so we’re not feeling too deprived.   When we get back home George drops Elizabeth and Mac to pick up the paddleboat that Bill Overland is lending us.  It’s actually a lot of work to get the thing moving, and the fact that it’s built for very tiny legs doesn’t make it any easier.

I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll paddle across the bay!

Jan teaches them the proper technique for catching crayfish with a string and some bacon.  Unfortunately it gets too late for us to cook them up that night and we don’t have a live trap to keep them overnight, so they go back in the drink.  There’s always next year…

The crawdad fishers

On Tuesday Elizabeth bakes a cake for an early celebration of Jan’s birthday (which is next week) and gets to use some of our berries for her wonderful frosting.

Gotta use those berries. Happy Birthday Mom!

Today is Elizabeth and Mac’s last day on the island, we’re driving them back to Hibbing this afternoon so they can catch an early flight in the morning.  Before they leave Elizabeth has a final encounter with a large representative of Minnesota’s official state bird…

Away, away vile bloodsucker!

This mosquito was given to Rozzie by Mike McNulty, our neighbor at our first Costa Mesa home.  Mike had adopted Rozzie as a surrogate father and produced several welded works of art to decorate Rozzie’s Minnesota cabin.

And, of course, the requisite formal portrait on the cabin steps.

Last day. 🙁

Elizabeth and her friend Mac (a.k.a. Macartney Morris) arrived a couple of days ago from New York for a six-day visit, they’ve been enjoying the solitude and wildlife of the island.   We drove to Hibbing on Friday to pick them up at the airport…

Welcome to Hibbing International Airport...

where they got to pose with a prominent member of the welcome committee.   On the way back home, just before Route 37 runs into 53,  Jan starts yelling, “Strawberries, strawberries!”.  Before I realize she means me to stop, I’ve gone too far and have to make a U-turn to get back to the pick-your-own strawberry farm…

Berry, berry, who's got the berry?

where we pick a few pints of lovely berries.  They’ve got a large blueberry patch as well, but those won’t be ready for picking until August.
More excitement awaits on Mud Creek Road  – we spot this large brown creature waddling along the road, and George comes to a screeching stop, leaps out of the car with his camera and chases it.  Beavers don’t move very fast on land, so when it hears him catching up the beaver stops, turns and faces him and begins hissing loudly.  This stopped George , and he took photos from a safe distance.

"Get any closer and you'll regret it!"

He’s since been told by several people that it’s not a good idea to tangle with a beaver…turns out they have very large teeth.  Who knew?

Bill and Lynne Overland had arrived back on the lake the day before, they’ve heard a lot about Elizabeth (what a surprise!) and were eager to meet her, and we all joined them that evening for a long-standing dinner date.  We were treated to a delicious multi-course Indian dinner with 10 -count-em 10 chutneys….yum!  And don’t even mention the fabulous cheesecake!

Jan, Elizabeth, Mac, Lynn and Bill Overland.

Elizabeth and Mac quickly got into the rhythm of Lake Vermilion, it’s amazing how busy you can be doing very little.  The weather had taken a drastic turn from the cold of not so long ago, and got very warm and humid.  You can see what it did to our wall calendar…

Curling from the heat and damp...

So Elizabeth and Mac took to the water, which Jan and I have actually done very little over the years that we’ve been coming up here.

Where's the cabana boy??

It turned out to be a pleasant break from the heat. George took the opportunity to check out the bottom of the lake near the dock, where lots of stuff has disappeared into the drink over the years.

Anyone remember "Sea Hunt"??

Not surprisingly, there were a fair number of beer cans and pop-tops and a tire or two (we use them for bumpers).  But what he was really happy about finding were a couple of Manhattan glasses that we had lost some five or six years ago.

Before and after...five years later.

We had forgotten that these particular glasses were Rozzie’s reward for supporting the U.S. Shooting Team when they competed in the 1991 World Cup.  After a bit of cleaning (well, quite a bit of cleaning!) they look as good as new, and we’re glad to have them back again.

And, naturally, Elizabeth and Mac very quickly got into the sit-on-the-dock-and-enjoy-the-view mode.

Don't bother me, I'm busy...

New York City is a galaxy far, far away.

The cabin was built in 1915, it was perched on about fourteen larch posts set on the bare ground.  Larch is pretty rot- and bug-resistant, but after 90 years even larch gives up the ghost, and for a number of years we wondered every summer before we came up here whether the cabin would still be standing.  A couple of years ago Bryan Tankersley leveled the cabin and set it on concrete pads, and once the foundation was secure we asked Bryan to go ahead and replace the roof, windows and doors, then refurbish the interior.  Some of you have already seen the slide shows of that work.  And, as I’ve mentioned, we had hoped to get by without putting on siding, but realized it would not be wise.  The exterior consisted of shiplapped cedar planks which are almost, but not quite, as tight as tongue-in-groove, but after ninety years the boards had shrunk and warped to the point that there were gaps that simply couldn’t be sealed with caulk.  So we asked Bryan to go ahead and put on the spruce half-round siding that he had originally suggested.
Here’s what the cabin looked like a few years ago, the foundation posts pointing every which way, and the exterior looking pretty tired.

The cabin in 2005.

When Bryan & Co. finished their work a couple of years ago, it looked like the image on the left, square and level, and partially covered with Tyveck moisture-barrier.   On the right you can see what it looked like after it had been fully prepared for the siding installation a couple of weeks ago, and the siding is beginning to go up.

In transition...

And then, one day, just like magic, it looked like this!

And voila!

Again, for those of you who haven’t already seen it, here’s the interior before and after Bryan’s work.

Inerior, 2005................................................................and today.

He put in the floor and tamarack paneling the winter before last, and for the past two summers we haven’t seen so much as a mouse dropping inside the cabin!  This is a far cry from the mouse motel that it had been in the past…quite apart from the colony of about fifty bats Bryan had to evict when he replaced the roof.  But it’s only been this year that we became aware that a new collection of creatures has come to inhabit the place.  Two we’ve spotted so far seem to be one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and some variety of elf.

Hi, Michaelangelo............................................................... is that you, Elrond??

Jan has also been hard at work making the cabin more comfortable and homey, one of her projects has been sanding, painting and re-upholstering the wooden chairs that she remembers from her childhood home in Evergreen Park.

You can see the original chairs at the table in one of the images above.

And the work goes on…

The two towns close to us are Ely and Tower, they’re roughly equidistant from where Mud Creek Road ends at 169, Ely to the east and Tower to the west.  Ely’s bigger, with over 4,000 inhabitants, and a variety of restaurants and cafes, bars, gas stations, grocery, liquor and hardware stores, barbers, etc.  Also a large number of outfitters-supplying and guiding trips into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area is the major source of the town’s economy.   And I’ve already mentioned its radio station, WELY.  Tower was a thriving town during the height of the lumber and iron mining undustry, but now is reduced to a population of around 500 with one grocery store, one restaurant, one cafe, one bar/laundromat…a pretty quiet town.  Its only hardware store closed a few years ago when a big True Value opened up off the highway just west of town.

Although they’re different in size, Ely and Tower both have big parades for the 4th of July.  We attended the Ely parade last year for the first time, and decided to check out the Tower event this year.

Main Street in Tower on a regular weekday...

...and waiting for the parade.

Seeing the town fill up with ten times its normal population is pretty impressive!  More than an hour before the start of the parade there are kids in line with all sorts of costumes and a large variety of modes of transportation (bikes, scooters, wagons, skates, pogo stick, unicycles, go-karts).   The VFW contingent begins the parade, and the huge line of kids follows immediately after them.

At the very head of the line...

Daisy Bay is on the west end of our half of the lake, I’m not sure where the clown and sumo wrestler hail from.  After a number of cars and floats with Miss Tower-Soudan and other beauty queens with their princesses, the Ely Klown Band appears.  These are the Ely volunteer firefighters, greatly enjoying dancing around in drag.

Ely Klown Band

More floats and boats presented by families, businesses and municipal offices, then Senator Al Franken comes zig-zagging down the street shaking hands.  Minnesota’s other senator, Amy Klobuchar, was also there, although we missed seeing her.

Senator Al Franken

This is the most popular entry in the parade, generating huge applause as it moves down the street.  (Minnesota’s state government had shut down on Friday following a political impasse in the capitol.)

Most popular entry.

Then the traditional fly-over by a couple of F-16 fighter jets from the 148th Fighter Wing of the Duluth Air National Guard.

More celebrities.

One of the reasons we came in for the Tower parade is that it gave us the opportunity to meet Jeff Forester and his family.  Jeff had written a fascinating history of the logging industry in the area which I had read a couple of years ago, and he has property on the south side of Pine Island, actually not far from us as the crow flies.  We’ve been corresponding by e-mail since then but never seemed to be on the island at the same time.  But it finally happened, and we’ve gotten to know his lovely family, his wife Allie and daughters Billy (11) and Daisy (8).  Daisy was a winner in her age group in the fifty-yard dash, one of the many events following the parade.

Allie & Jeff Forester.........................................with Billy & Daisy

We love listening to the local radio station, WELY.

On Saturday mornings there’s the Polka Hour with gems like:

• “That’s Where My Money Goes”
• “Tra La Hoy Le LiLi Oh”
• “When I Saw You Standing There”
• “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain”
• “Pennsylvania Polka”

And one of my favorites,

“In heaven there is no beer
That’s why we drink it here
And when we’re gone from here
All our friends will be drinking our beer.”

Now in German:
“Im Himmel gibt’s kein Bier…”, etc.

There’s stuff for sale:

• A 110 cubic foot military refrigerator unit, insulated box only, $275.
• A central heating boiler, with pumps, holding tank & everything, $1500.
• An Ashley wood stove, $100
• A Kennedy 32 foot 1982 house boat, make an offer.
• A Harley Davidson golf cart, good shape, $400.  (Does that come with a Queen seat??)

There are emergency announcements like:

• Lost on Burntside Road, fishing gear stolen from the first house to Echo Trail, please call.
• iPhone found on the beach at Lake #2 in Bear Head Lake State Park, come pick it up at the radio station

Charles Kuralt loved this area – in his book, “Charles Kuralt’s America”, he called Ely “the best place to spend July”.  And some years ago he rescued WELY from bankruptcy and gave it its moniker, “End of the Road Radio”.

The Ojibway/Chippewa name for our lake, depending on whom you read, is given as “Onamuni” or “Sah-Ga-Fe-Gum-Wah-Ma-Mah-Nee”, which means “Red and gold reflection from the sky to the smooth lake surface near sunset”, or else, more tersely, “Lake of the Sunset Glow”.  The French trappers who first came to the region transformed it into “Lac Vermilion”.  There are signs in the area boasting that National Geographic named Lake Vermilion “One of the ten most beautiful lakes in the world”.  However, as true as the statement may be, it turns out that National Geographic never actually said it, a lamentable lapse on their part.

Here’s Jan about to enjoy another sunset.

She’s standing at:

47  53’ 16.53″ N
92  17’ 22.13″ W

If you go to these coordinates in Google Earth you’ll see our dock pointing to the north, and a couple of light smudges for the boathouse and cabin.  I don’t think you’ll be able to see Jan.

Some highs and lows of life in the wilderness…

Saturday’s bass became yesterday’s lunch, sauted in butter to a crispy brown skin.  Newly inspired, I was back out on the dock yesterday evening with my rod and reel and landed what must be the grandfather of Saturday’s fish, an 18” long 2 1/2 pound beauty, the biggest fish I’ve ever caught.  I immediately scaled and cleaned it and put it away in the fridge.

The mighty hunter and his prey.

And for you skeptics...

Lemme in! I'm still in my P.J.s!

Early this morning we’re woken up by thunder and lightning.  I’m on the dock at 4AM to check the boats, I hadn’t prepared for a downpour, but it hasn’t been raining that long and it doesn’t look so bad, so I go back to bed.  By 9 AM a fair bit of rain has come down, I go back out and turn the small boat’s stern toward the shore to reduce the risk of its getting swamped, I bail it out and run the Bayliner’s bilge pump.

In the afternoon Jan bakes a couple of loaves of bread and I prepare the vegetables that I’m going to use to stuff the fish and bake it.  But while we’re enjoying our Manhattans in the evening (we’re indoors, it’s never stopped raining), the power flickers for a few moments and then goes off.  That puts dinner on hold, since our stove is electric.  We have an interesting adventure with the Coleman lantern – it worked fine when I tested it after arriving at the cabin, but now when I try to start it, it decides to burst into flame.  I carefully turn it off and carefully carry out the back door and leave it there.

But the power comes back on within an hour, leaving us plenty of time to bake our fish, which is delicious.  We should have invited company to help eat it, half of it goes in the freezer for another time.

We’ve got a long and busy day today, we’re planning to join Gloria’s birding walk again at Bearhead State Park, then go on to Cook to check out the Lion’s Club weekend rummage sale, and return home via the Echo Trail, which we’ve never been on.

Up at the crack of dawn (5:30AM) for the birdwalk, and as we drive into the park we pass a momma snapping turtle laying her eggs not far from the road.

Road into Bear Head Lake State Park

Momma's pretty oblivious to her surroundings at the moment

The eggs will help contribute either to the next generation of snappers, or to an enterprising fox’s dinner.

The birding group is larger and more congenial this week since the mozzies have dwindled to a manageable herd rather than the dense clouds of a couple of weeks ago.

Rita, Dave & Dave, Jim & Nicole, Jan, Judy, ?, Gloria

The scheduled two-hour walk turns into a leisurely three-hour stroll, and we’re well-rewarded for our efforts with two bird’s nests, a large variety of warblers and a spectacular American redstart.

A hanging nest...

...with baby vireos??

Our next a stop is at SOS (“Soudan’s Only Store”) just down the road, for a “trash tag”, a prepaid card allowing us ten visits to the dump (aka “Solid Waste Transfer Station”), then on to the Tower Cafe for breakfast.

Our drive to Cook includes a stop at the nursery for parsley and Thai basil plants to add to Jan’s garden. And the Lion’s Rummage Sale is HUGE…we pass up the charming sled adapted into a carriage and the wonderful old rocker, and we pass on the opportunity to make a silent auction bid on a beautiful working Singer treadle sewing machine and a set of loon-decorated dinner plates.

Then we’re heading back home along the Echo Lake Trail, some fifty miles of gravel road through a variety of woods and geological formations.

The Echo Trail...that's a deer down the left side of the road.

We stop to walk a short an interpretive trail and are beset by black flies-ouch! These are evidently one of Mother Natures’ little jokes, it seems they’re necessary to pollinate blueberries. Sigh!

Fire & Ice interpretive trail.

The nature trail is called “Fire and Ice”, and illustrates the roles of forest fires and glaciers in shaping the geology and ecology of the area. We try to remember what it’s called when a glacier deposits a lone boulder far separated from its colleagues. “Accidental”? “Sporadic”? A half hour later the Magic 8-Ball of our memories settles down and the answer floats to the surface – it’s an “Erratic”.

Glacial erratic.

The sign says that this guy weighs some 80 tons. We didn’t confirm it.

We get back to Glenwood Lodge via Ely (where we indulge in yet more hardware shopping), and as we’re loading up the Bayliner at the dock Bonnie Sibert comes down from the bar and invites us to join her and Dick for a beer. Tonight is Karaoke Night and the joint is jumping! There’s a DJ with an enormous selection of songs (but not “Oh Donna”…that’s another story), Dick and Bonnie are two-stepping and there are several volunteer singers. We stay for a beer and a short chat but then head back across the lake. Karaoke is just too loud for our tender ears now accustomed to a great deal of silence.

A gorgeous sunset closes out the first warm and sunny day we’ve had in three weeks, and there’s a fish that’s been taunting us by periodically splashing at the surface near the end of our dock. So I get out my rod and reel and manage to catch a lively 11” smallmouth bass. It’s tomorrow’s lunch.