Road Trip to Canada, EH {Camping Trip Day 3}

-July 3, 2010-

Saturday morning we woke up and fixed a quick little breakfast. We had granola and milk (freeze dried). We heated the water for our coffee then began to heat the water for the granola mix.... then thinking about how it's weird we're having to warm up the water when it's suppose to be like a cold cereal... which caused us to read the directions again to see it read 'cold water' not hot. So breakfast was ready quicker than we thought :-)

We hiked out of the park and got to our car which we hadn't seen in over 24 hours. We brushed our teeth for the first time in that time as well. We had our tooth brushes at camp with us, but for some reason didn't bother brushing our teeth 'til then. Ahh it's amazing how much a clean mouth can make you feel refreshed. And the A/C in the car didn't hurt either. Harpo was SO excited to see the car as well!

We moseyed on north, taking our time and enjoying the sights. All the while keeping our eyes peeled for moose! We desperately wanted to see a moose. We stopped at an overlook:

And also stopped in Grand Portage to look around.

Grand Portage is an Indian Reservation just south of the Canadian/US border. We got out and walked down by the river

And Kyle had to read the information sign. You can see Harpo tugging on his gentle leader nose strap.

Then we made it to the Canadian border!

We drove up to Thunder Bay... which really wasn't to exciting of a city. Pretty run down. But we did find a nice little park by the water to walk around at. And saw a REAL Canadian Goose, hee hee.

The park was still set up for their Canada Day Celebration a few days before... looks like someone didn't proof read their sign before sending it to the printer, lol.

We had lunch at a little place called Gargoyles. Since we were rather disappointed in the town of Thunder Bay, we went about 29 km west to a little place called Kakabeka Falls. Unfortunately they required you to pay for parking which was $5.25 something (Canadian money, which we didn't have) and since it was 33°C (92°F) we just decided to take turns, I ran down to the falls, got some pictures then went back to the air conditioned car and Kyle went to take a peek at the falls. They sure were pretty, but it sure was hot out!

We decided to take some back roads and eventually make our way to 61 and head back to the United States where it was cooler.

Shortly after we pulled back onto 61 we saw a sign for CHEESE!

We just had to go! Mind you we were in the middle of farm land and when we pulled up to this:

It wasn't really the 'Osceola Cheese' look I had envisioned. but they did have samples!

They even had a goat, who was trying to stay cool in the blazing canadian heat.

We made it back to Minnesota and stopped in Grand Marais to walk around the cute little touristy town.

We got some ice cream and stuck our feet in the water.

On the way home we continued our moose hunt and began a purple flower hunt. Eventually we saw them far enough ahead and had time to slow down to pull over

We made it back to the park and loaded up for our hike into camp. We decided to take a different trail, which was a little longer, but offered a change of scenry

It had a nice little overlook on the way

It was a wonderful feeling to arrive back at our camp

Since we were dripping in sweat from the trot in, we decided to head down to our watering hole to rinse off a bit. Harpo was pooped and rested on the rock, while

I tried to stay clear of the gi-normous crawdad's waiting below the water for their dinner (my toes) lol. Kyle tried to inform me they would swim away when I touched the water, but I was still a little frightened :-P There's just something unsettling about swimming with this!

We got back to camp, fixed dinner, got our food up in the tree, and nestled in our tent for bed just before it started to down pour! God was good to us and held the rain off until we were 'ready' :-)

Hiking George Crosby State Park {Day 2}

-July 2, 2010-

After a nice nights sleep on the earth's surface, I wanted to check our food first thing! If you remember when we went to Split Rock last year, and awoke to find the chipmunks had gotten into our food. I was worried that we wouldn't have anything left to eat the next three days if a bear or rodents managed to steal our food. But we lucked out! Our food was safe!

Today's plan was to hike the park, we wanted to take the trail that went south along the river, then swing over west and come up on another trail that was a little less rough terrain. First we had breakfast, bagels with freeze dried scrambled eggs and coffee.

Then we headed off down the trail. Looking back at my pictures, I didn't get any of the crazy trail, just the pretty scenery. Since we were right along the river, we stopped a lot to look down stream and enjoyed listening to the cascades.

We stopped at an overlook, where I actually had phone service for a second. Once we got off the main hwy 61 to head back to this state park, our phones went out of service, so I wasn't able to call mom to tell her we made it safely. I still wasn't able to call because the signal was scarce, but I was able to send a quick email saying all is well and I'll call her tomorrow when we were on the road up to Canada. We stopped for a little snack and enjoyed the breeze.

We also got to watch a little butterfly fluttering around.

I tried and tried to get him to open his wings and finally was able to snap the camera when he had them open for a split second

Then we headed back down the hill, excited for the adventure ahead of us. It got close to lunch time so we decided to stop and have a swim, then fix our lunch (well squeeze the tuna salad out of the foil packets onto bagel slices).

It also gave us a chance to try out our waterproof camera IN the water. It felt nice to dip in the cold water. I of course was a chicken and didn't want to get too far. There was a drop off after a few of the 6 inch in rocks, and I didn't want to venture off of those. The crawdad's were abundant as well, which I didn't want to get my toes nibbled on. Kyle had a fun time swimming though :-)

We even got Harpo to go in a little bit... but he does NOT like the water.

We fixed lunch, then attempted to get a few family photos...

We trekked a little farther and came across a little hidden waterfall.

It was a little bit of the trail, but we stopped and enjoyed it for a bit. Then we hiked on, we were almost to the end of the trail we were wanting to take and were looking for where it curved around and went west of the river. I wish I would have gotten some pictures of the trail, because it was RUGGED! We were tree trunk climbing, rock jumping, and limb swatting. Some parts we weren't even sure if we were on a trail, but then it would come back again and we'd know we were going the right way. About every 20 minutes we'd pass a campsite entrance. and about every 2 hours we'd come across a map showing us where we were. We made it to where we thought would curve around, to find a sign saying "dead end to campsites 13-16" We knew we didn't want to go that way, and we were planning to take the trail that went west before that spot, but we never found it. It was at that moment that our life as we knew it was demoralized. lol, okay not our life, just our hike. We were crushed that we were going to have to go BACK through everything we just went through. It wasn't bad the first time because we had the thought of "glad we're through that, won't have to do that again" but as we turned around, shoulders sunken, we knew what lay ahead, and it wasn't a happy moment. And I stopped taking pictures.

We did although come across a snake, the first and only snake we saw the whole time.

One thing I love about Minnesota is there are no poisonous snakes or spiders, it's great!

Then we walked up hill for about 30-45 minutes straight! At that moment we would have given anything to just teleport ourselves to our campsite.

We did eventually make it back, dropped our packs off, grabbed the water filter, went down to the cascades and took a dip in the water. We also had to treat some water for dinner. We made dinner back at the campsite. Probably the worst dinner ever, but it didn't matter, we were starving!!! The noodles were under cooked and the packaged salmon as icky. We were pooped! And so was Harpo!! As soon as we got in our tent he was out like a light!

We played some cards for a while because we didn't think it was right to go to bed at 7:30.... so we waited til 9:00 then we were probably out as soon as our heads hit our pillow folded up sweatshirts.

That was day 2 and hey, we were still smiling!

Saturday we left camp and took a drive to Canada, I'll post that tomorrow or maybe this evening, if I get around to it.

George Crosby Manitou State Park {Day 1}

-July 1, 2010-

When Kyle got offered his new job, he decided to take some time off between the switch, at which time we planned a camping/backpacking trip up on the north shore. Of course since it was 4th of July weekend, there weren't many spots open, but we were wanting to venture out to backpacking anyway, so we reserved a campsite for 3 nights at George Crosby Manitou State Park. Oh the adventures that were awaiting us.

**Side note, I will try my best to depict the naive excitement we had starting out... which throughout the post you will soon see the excitement dwindle :-P **

We made our way north, Thursday morning, Harpo in tow.

He loves riding in the car.

We had a short stop in Duluth, grabbed a bite to eat at Subway and some coffee to keep us awake. It was a gorgeous day, a little chili walking around Duluth, but that was just because of the breeze coming off the lake. Remember back in October 2007, when we first came to Duluth. Oh wait I wasn't blogging back then, well here is a picture of Harpo from that trip and from today as well.

We got back on the road to continue up 61, the road that runs parallel to Lake Superior on the North Shore. We stopped again in Two Harbors for a quick little jaunt around their bay.

We walked out to the little lighthouse. They had another lighthouse, which was a paid tour so we passed. As we were leaving the touristy area we saw a funny, brown, horse looking thing trotting down the middle of the road. "was that a moose?" it could have been a baby moose. We got up to where he went into the brush and strained our eyes to see if we could see anything, but we couldn't find him. We REALLY wanted to see a moose during this trip, and this really got our hopes high!

We traveled farther up north and made it to the state park. We checked in at the self registrations. This was a very primitive state park, no running water, no electricity, all sites were backpacking campsites and there wasn't even an office, just a little shelter where you self registered and checked in. After stopping at the little hut, we drove on in to the lone parking lot and got all suited up and ready to hike into our campsite. Since we were less than 2 miles from the car, and we were staying at the same spot for three nights, we decided to bring our normal tent (not the little backpacking tent we have). There wasn't room for it, but since 'we didn't have to travel very far' Kyle said he'd just carry it. We also were carrying a bag with Kyle's accounting book... if you've ever taken accounting - you should know that this is NOT a light book! And of course I couldn't leave my DSLR behind so I had that in a separate bag as well. Boy were we newbies!

We hiked to our campsite, and hiked and hiked... and eventually made it. Boy - we love camping secluded and were we ever... be careful what you wish for. After almost an hour later, we arrived to our campsite #2

It was the most luxurious campsite we'd ever seen! It was pretty awesome. We had multiple rooms! Here's the entry room, The kitchen:

The bathroom (latrine):

And might I add, after 3 days of using these type of facilities, I was SOOO happy to see a port-a-potty!

There were two 'bedrooms' (separate tent pad areas) and another little common dirt area! It was like a penthouse campsite! (pictures of the other rooms on the last day).

We immediately had welcoming visitors

We unloaded the heavy stuff... and we learned to NEVER go hiking while carrying things, lol. We set up the tent and dropped off our sleeping bags inside. Then decided to go on another short little jaunt before dinner time. There was a dead end just north of us that we decided to wonder up and check out the sites.

We found lots of different mushrooms. Don't worry we didn't eat any.

The north path was pretty grassy... which now I see it only as a 'preview' of what we were to encounter the next day. Harpo was still hanging in there, pretty excited. He also didn't know what he was getting himself into for the weekend.

We did see some pretty sites of the nearby river.

And the sky was just gorgeous!

We moseyed back to our campsite and started getting things ready for dinner. I went down to the river to gather and treat some water, while Kyle worked on starting a campfire.

We had another friendly visitor during dinner. This little guy was NOT shy!

And he liked to torment Harpo, of course Harpo was un-experienced with chipmunk hunting and was rather confused at first. But throughout the weekend, he got faster. Never caught him, but was faster about chasing him into the brush.

We cooked dinner and then went back to where I got the water to get some evening photos of the cascades. Ah it was so beautiful being in the great outdoors!

We made it back to camp and climbed in the tent ready for bed. It was an exciting day and we were looking forward to hiking and exploring the park more the next day.

As we were checking Harpo for ticks before we snuggled up in our sleeping bags (yes Harpo snuggles with us, he is one pampered pooch) we noticed these bright read dots.

Me being the worried, motherly, caregiver immediately got scared that something was wrong. They didn't seem to hurt him, and they definitely looked like bites. He had about 8 of them on his belly. We decided to just let them be and check on them the next day. Luckily they did go away, but he did get more all weekend. They just took about 24 hours to disappear. He is now well and no red bumps. AND he did get his heart guard this month so he should be all taken care of.

Ahh day one wasn't too shabby, a little rough having to carry all our gear in, but we recovered quickly and had the weekend ahead of us.