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10.26.04 | 10:47 am
Boundary Waters

I am back from my trip to the Boundary Waters. It was an excellent trip, and the worst weather was during the drive to MN, the drive to Gunflint, and the drive home. While we were camping, it was was pretty nice. No people, no bugs, and just a bit of cold toes during the day. At night it got cold, but we went to bed with the sun.

This post might be a little picture heavy, but patience will be worth it.

Our entry point had snow. This sort of made us think we were crazy, but it was all gone by that night.

We decided to base camp so we would have camp already set up, and we would not need to break down, and portage everything. We picked a nice campsite on Cross Bay Lake.

This is the view from our site, over to the other one that was closed. Ours looked just like it, but with less trees down.

We went through an area affected by the 1999 storm that blew down most of the trees. We weren't in the worst of it, but you could still see the effects.

The cool part of going through the blowdown was that you could see the roots. The soil up there is very shallow, over a whole lot of granite. The root systems just peeled up when the trees were knocked down, and you could see how they spread out wide, and how shallow they are.

They were taller than me, and this one folded in half where the trunk was.

On our second day, we went to Snipe Lake, which was incredibly gorgeous. The boys fished, without a single bite, and I got to take the Solo where ever I wanted.

The day turned out to be warm and sunny, and there was no wind at all. I saw a eagle nest, muskrat, and all sorts of cool stuff. There were lots of things still alive and growing in the woods.

There were amazing lichens. I told the boys to look at some that were especially large, and Warren's reply was "I though those were bushes!"

It was a bit damp, so the fungi were out. There were really cool hunter-orange jelly fungi, pure white agarics, some that looked exactly like fallen birch leaves, toothed fungi, hedgehog fungi, maze fungi, an unusual stalked puffball with hairs/spines on it, and all sorts of bracket and parchment fungi.

There was very little wildlife, but I swear I heard a loon a few times in the morning. The boys say it was a squirrel. We did have a muskrat near us, and saw it at night.

I did take a ball of yarn and needles with me, but only got to the point of casting on multiple times. There was enough other things to do.

On the drive up in Knife River I saw a sign, a regular highway sign, that said "yarn shop" with a little arrow. We stopped on the way back so I could go. This woman has turned her garage into a two story yarn store, called Playing with Yarn . She had everything Noro has to offer, so I finally got to touch it all and figure out what it all is. I came away with a skein of greyish Kureyon and a ball a Trekking XXL sock yarn. The other nice thing about the store is that it is very organized, and each shelf has a tag with the price, yardage, gauge, content, and how much to estimate a sweater will need, or socks, hats, and other things.

We also stopped at Russ Kendall's for smoked salmon - that is some good fish.

Coming through Two Harbors we saw something that made us wonder - Lil' Dog Car and Pet Wash . We were a little unsure about the mental picture of washing dogs with those big rotating brushes, or even the hose sort.

There were other odd combinations up there - Al's Bait and Chamber of Commerce was spotted. In Grand Marais there is the Municipal Liquor Store, with the City Council in the back of the building.

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