We had an uneventful return trip – got up, had breakfast in the lobby, loaded into the car and drove 20 minutes to the airport. We arrived home at 1:20 pm to 96-degree weather and I’m trying not to be sad. WE’VE SEEN EVERY PARK IN THE LOWER 48!!! And it took about 13 years.
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| Return flight |
Now it’s back to the grind of bad weather, nothing pretty to see, a job I hate and continued tragic hair loss. Things will get better soon. Signing off ☹
This morning we got up bright and early and grabbed a more official sign picture.
Then we met Billy (our pilot) on the dock at 8:30am. We took off immediately and the flight back was just as amazing and less scary than the flight out. The weather was perfect again and I do really wish we could have stayed longer but Ryan was thankful to get cell service.
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| Return flight |
We landed and ate breakfast along the “river” at Copper Range Depot Family Restaurant. Then back on the road to Minneapolis (about a six-hour drive).
We stopped a few times along the way then stopped for a late
lunch in Siren, Wisconsin at Adventure Restaurant & Pub. Our waitress Mary was a sweet older lady and
the town was adorable.
We rolled into downtown around 5 and parked on the top floor
of a parking garage that was filling up because tons of people were already at
Target Field (the Twins ballpark) and the field was directly across from our
hotel (Hampton Inn & Suites) which was just perfect.
We stayed on the 9th floor (room 9-1-1) and I
finally washed my hair because it was the first blow dryer I’d encountered and
I had some tragic hair loss and ended up crying for a good bit before we got on
our way. We walked up and down the
streets in downtown just so that I could get in my 35 minutes of exercise and
we could see the city. And damn it was
so clean and the people were so nice.
Then just before 7 we strolled right up to the stadium and
listened to the national anthem just as we walked in. This field was just incredible as were our
seats. The Twins played the Orioles and were sat on row 17 of Section 113
behind home plate. The game was great –
went into the 10th inning (Orioles won) and the weather was perfect
– literally perfect. We mostly wore
pants and brought a sweatshirt that you didn’t need until the walk home. It was the perfect end to an incredible
vacation – one of my favorites.
Cool mural of Prince on the way home (just outside of the stadium.)
BEST DAY OF THE TRIP. We left the cabin early (the temperature was in the high 30s) and began a fairly long drive over to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
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| Btw, this is what it looks like at 4:15am. |
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| Our cute cabin at Park Point Resort (Cabin #3) |
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| View from our deck |
First stop was just pass Duluth in Superior, WI where we stopped at a Kwik Trip, which was equally awesome to a Quick Trip in TX which made us wonder if the two were somehow related.
We drove on and stopped at another Kwik Trip just after we
crossed into Michigan (MY 50TH STATE!) – I think were in Ironwood,
MI. Another two hours to go to
Houghton. About 20 minutes outside of
town, I finally told the kids the “surprise” – that we’re traveling via sea
plane and not ferry! Houghton is
beautiful! It sits on one side of the
“river” which is really just Lake Superior. Hancock, MI sits on the other side. We ate lunch at a Jimmy Johns then walked
down to the Houston Visitor Center (I wasn’t sure there was a visitor center on
the island or if there was, that it would be open). We took a picture in front of kind of a
shitty national park sign which sucks given it’s our last on in the contiguous
states. We bought hat pins and magnets,
stamped the passbooks and Ryan got a pin for Ben.
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| Done w/ the lower 48! |
We then drove across the bridge into Hancock and parked our car at Isle Royale Seaplanes. We got there really early – like 2:30 – but didn’t have to be there until 3:15. It was such a long drive that I just wanted to be sure we didn’t miss it.
They weighed our bags and then we waited. The weather was perfect – and that’s the big unknown with getting on/off the island is there can quickly be bad weather or dense fog. But not today – it was genuinely perfect. Our pilot Billy was awesome. The plane held 8 people including the pilot. Nick got to sit shotgun and the kids and I sat across the way back.
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| The plane |
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| Nervous Me |
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| Coming in for landing on Isle Royale |
I was a little panicked that I’d either get sick or have a panic attack just because the plane is SO small. The kids and I were shoulder-to-shoulder, barely all fitting on the back row. Some luggage is packed into the back of the plane and some goes into the pontoons. I was also a little worried at first because there were like 14 people waiting and just one plane but then the second plane showed up.
We left right on time at 4 and got the island around 5 and all I can say is spectacular. It was a little scary at first but then it was magical. There was a couple on the row in front of us and a solo lady who worked on the island and was on the team that has been helping to replenish the wolf population. She was interesting to listen to. She also showed the couple a cool map on an app on her phone which I quickly downloaded and found useful on our hike (Gaia). It was a short walk to the white tent where we signed ourselves in (you had to pay the entrance fees in advance and provide the receipt #). It was another very short walk to the Rock Harbor Lodge, where we stayed. Our room was directly on the water – no cell service, no TV, nothing.
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| View from room 12 of Rock Harbor Lodge of Lake Superior. |
Ryan got really upset when she learned we didn’t have service because her last text to Ben was on a plane. She was sad for a while then she rallied.
Pretty quickly, we got situated, emptied our backpacks (we all left our suitcases in the car – Ryan opted to bring her roller bag) and loaded up to take a 4ish mile hike (Scoville Point Trail). We ran into the café and grabbed sandwiches for later because they closed at 7:30 and we wouldn’t be back by then. Then we headed out on the trail.
And wow! The bugs were bad but nothing compared to Voyageurs. If we’d done the parks in reverse, we would’ve been complaining about the bugs but Isle Royale was bug-light compared to Voyageurs.
The Gaia app came in handy because there were several places where the trail was hard to find but this app works off GPS satellite so didn’t require service. Along the was to the Point we saw what looked like giant rabbit pellets. We hung out at the Point for a while and talked about where we all wanted to live when the kids got older – it was sweet.
Then on the return, a giant jack rabbit ran across the trail in front of us. I think I was the only one who saw it but it was so damn big that at first I thought it was a doe.
Then we came upon the moose!
A baby moose…as we got closer, a second baby moose…and as we were
passing by, a mama moose. The kids and
Nick were scared and kind of lost it so I don’t have any pictures of the mama
but I clipped one from the funny video that's too long to post.
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| Two baby moose |
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| Mama moose (image screen shot from video) |
We returned to the Lodge around 8:15, officially dipped our toes in Lake Superior, then ate our sandwiches at the table in our room, overlooking the water.
It was just an incredible day. I wish we were staying here longer!
We met Dan at our dock at 8:30 this morning with some apprehension because it was misting, windy, overcast and cold. But the weather held up for us ok.
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| Dan & Dan's Boat |
He drove us, in his boat, over to the Cruiser Lake trailhead and dropped us off a little after 9am. We were doused in bug spray but it mattered not – the bugs were epic – likely the single most memorable part of this trip.
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| Getting dropped off at Cruiser Lake Trailhead |
We hiked back to Agnes Lake (beautiful)
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| Agnes Lake |
Then we double backed and hiked to Eks Lake, stopping to eat lots of delicious wild blue berries.
There’s a lot of remote camping out here so it was great when we took a dead-end trail to this:
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| A potty |
We lost and found the trail several times and saw no humans at all. We cut the hiking short because of the bugs and popped out on Eks Bay where Dan was waiting for us. He’s the nicest guy – 63 – as stereo-typically Minnesotan as you can imagine – and he loves vampire books 😊 We got back in the boat and he drove us to Ellworth Rock Gardens, something Jason, the owner of our resort, said we should definitely do. And it was definitely stupid. Some weird guy “carved” statues out of rocks and arranged them with some flowers. The best part of this stop was the wild raspberry bushes!
The most photographed stop in the park was the statue called Meteorite. So we HAD to go see it and it was literally a stack of rocks.
We got back in the boat and Dan took us back to the
resort. We never ate lunch on the trail
because of the bugs so we ate our pepperoni, Ritz, cream cheese lunch in our
cabin and just chilled out – much cooler today than the previous days.
Later in the day we gathered our dirty clothes and drove back to International Falls to do some laundry and eat dinner. The kids had never been in a laundromat before and I hadn’t in a lot of years but shit – detergent - $1.00 per load, 1 load of laundry - $2.50 (we did two) – one giant dryer load - $6.25!!! So, two loads of laundry cost $13.25! I feel like the last time I was at a laundromat it was $0.75 to wash and $0.50 to dry – max!
After we put the clothes in the dryer we left (with some anxiety knowing that if someone were to steal our clothes, we’d be hosed…and naked) and ate dinner at Sammy’s Pizza just down the street. It was good!
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| Sammy's in beautiful International Falls, MN |
Nick got pizza, I got fried fish and fries (ate way too much), Ryan got chicken strips and Grant got poutine and wings – and as is normal for Grant, had tons of food left over.
We went back to the laundromat, folded our clothes and left. Now we’re mostly packed, it’s 9pm and
basically bright as day, and we’re leaving very early tomorrow morning. The kids STILL think we’re getting to Isle
Royale via ferry but we’re actually taking a seaplane and they don’t know about
it. I’ve had to lie to so many strangers
because people keep asking how we’re getting there in front of the kids. It’s basically as expensive to fly from the
coast of Michigan to Isle Royale as it was to fly from Dallas to
Minneapolis. But I’m SO excited because
none of us have ever been on a seaplane before.
So I’m signing off from Voyageurs and will be signing on
tomorrow night after we’ve seen the Last of the Lower 48!!
P.S. Ryan found out
this morning that she got 3s 4s and 5s on her four AP test which makes her a
Distinguished AP Scholar.
This was a fun day! We left the cabin at 9:00 and drove to the Ash River Visitor Center (where we all might still have a little PTSD from Bug-Ageddon on Day 2). I met a nice older bicyclist dude out on the dock who told me about June berries then found some and brought me a handful to try. We loaded onto a boat with the oddest group of 25 other people…EVER.
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| Our ferry at Ash River Visitor Center |
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| Family picture on the dock |
There was this bat shit crazy mom from Chicago who was just a hot mess. She had three sons, her husband, a girlfriend of one of the sons and either her mom or her mom-in-law and she might have been the loudest person I’ve ever encountered.
But no one topped JENNIFER – our ranger or deckhand
depending on which hat she was wearing.
She had either a really high or really low IQ and was just
adorable. I envied how much she clearly
loved her job and Ryan said she must wake up the same way Sponge Bob does but
to her bald eagle alarm clock. She spent
a lot of time explaining that when she points things out she will reference a
clock so the boat moving forward is 12:00.
And directly to her left is 9:00am (which made us chuckle because what
about 9:00pm?)
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| Meet Jennifer (in the life jacket) |
We stopped on our way to Kettle Falls and saw multiple bald eagles including a baby in his nest.
When we got to Kettle Falls and the Kettle Falls Hotel, we
ate our lunch in a screened in porch that was part of the hotel and met a
couple of very cool younger people traveling solo, both from Texas. One was a
guy Frank who is an Influencer (IG handle SpeakingQuiteFrankly) and lives in a
tiny house and one who was a music teacher at Texas A&M. Almost everyone on the boat had been to
multiple national parks. The sons of the bat shit crazy mom asked the kids to
play volleyball with them – the oldest one who just graduated high school
clearly had a mad crush on Ry and told her his parents think he’s going to
Florida State University in the fall but “just between you and me, I’m actually
going to Europe.” WEIRD.
We took a quick tour of the dam and the falls (with Jennifer) and it started raining but not too badly. We got back on the boat around 2 and talked to Frank most of the way back. He’s wrapping up the Lower 48 on this trip once he goes to Wind Cave and Teddy Rosevelt. We also met an older couple from Tennessee. The wife was a retired high school teacher and she might have been my older soul sister. They’d been to 34 parks and she said they’d turned their dining room into a map room.
After we got off the boat, she walked up next to me and said
kind of clandestinely, “So, should this even be a national park?” Funny!
We said goodbye to Frank and stopped at two places on the
way home, trying to find mosquito nets for our faces. Both places were sold out – the first guy
said he’d sold 50 in the last couple of days and the other place had sold
40. They said the bugs are usually bad
but that they are especially, incredibly bad right now, which is also what the
cashier at Town Drug in International Falls said. So, no luck on face nets for tomorrow.
We got back to the cabin and the temp had dropped a
lot! I did a yoga routine, Grant and I
played Gin Rummy and I kicked his ass…again, we fixed tacos for dinner and the
kids took the kayaks out again tonight.
It’s 10pm now and I can hear fireworks all around me. I
think it’ll be an early night tonight because we’re meeting Dan, our boat captain,
tomorrow morning at 8:30 on our dock!
Today was a lot of fun and the weather was beautiful. We all four went out on the kayaks around 10:45 and visited small islands - it was overcast and seemed like it would rain but never did. We stayed out on the kayaks for a little more than an hour and even stopped at an island to pee. It kind of reminds me of a prettier Lake DeGray with all the tiny islands.
We fixed sandwiches in the cabin then just hung out for a
while – Nick and Ryan napped, Grant was on his phone and I sat on the deck
playing games on my ipad and reading a book that I bought last week to take on
this trip because it sounded interesting, only to read the first chapter and
realize that I’ve read it before and still have no idea what it’s about. WTH?
It’s called Freedom by Jonathan Franzen.
Around 3 or so we drove to International Falls, MN which sits on the Canadian border and snapped pictures in front of Smoky Bear at Smoky Bear Park!
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| Self explanatory |
(There was a small festival going on and a band was setting up to play). We walked three blocks to City Drug and got bug spray, anti-itch cream and a couple other things. Ryan can’t get over the accents of the people. But everyone is SO friendly.
We drove to the Rainy River Visitor Center (I think there
are three in total and we’ve now seen them all) and it was my favorite.
We drove back to the cabin, finally stopping to take an official picture (officially #53):
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Then we baked some frozen pizzas and then I went back out on the kayak, after walking straight through the screen door and totally jacking it up. I went and circled Echo Island and then Ryan and Grant took kayaks out too. We all convened in the middle of the lake to watch the sun set 9:15pm! and Nick went for a walk.
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| 9:15pm in the middle of Lake Kabatogama |
When we got back to the cabin the kids started a fire and roasted s’mores (and were pissed to learn that the big box of Hershey bars they bought were Special Dark chocolate). The bugs were so bad that they came back inside pretty quickly.
Nick, Grant and I showered and Grant looks like he went
through the jungles of Nam – he’s so jacked up with bug bites and cuts.
It’s 10:30 and we’re starting Season 1 of Stranger Things
for the 3rd or 4th time.
Fun day!
Today will hopefully go down as the low point of this trip. Nick and I walked around this morning. (I fell asleep around 4:20 and got up at 7 so did get a couple of hours of sleep). We heard a bird that sounded like a Mockingjay (Hunger Games reference) and we talked to a guy who owns the resort down the way who was gonna let us rent canoes at 2pm.
We got back to the cabin and drove to the Lake Kabatogama Visitor Center (Kah bah toe gah mah) and bought hat pins and magnets and stamped the passbooks. #53 is official.
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The ranger recommended a hike from the Ash River Visitor Center (about 15? Miles from our current location) so we drove over and confirmed with the ranger at Ash River who casually mentioned that “it’s going to be buggy.”
Well, that was the understatement of the year. We started out on the 3.2-mile Blind Ash Bay
trail (lollipop style – out and back with a loop at the end). Right when we got to the loop, I couldn’t
take it any more – it was like a scene out of Apocalypse Now – bugs everywhere,
biting you on the face, buzzing in your ears as you slowly start to feel your
sanity slipping away. We turned around
and hauled ass back to the car – MISERABLE!
From there we drove back to the cabin, stopping for gas at a
little store. We fixed sandwiches then
got ready to go grab our canoes at 2pm. Only one was there and the owner had
had an emergency so this other guy was there who said they rent them for
$75/day (which seemed outrageous) so we said we’d come back tomorrow morning
around 9 and get a full day use out of them.
When we drove back to the cabin, we finally met Jason and Robyn – the
owners. We had a nice and somewhat confusing
conversation. We asked Jason if he knew
where we could rent some fishing poles.
He said he had some but then said that by the time you pay for tackle
you might as well get a guide. Then he
mentioned that our boat was parked “Right over there” so I had to remind him
that HE discouraged me from renting a boat and told me to get a guy who could
drive us around.
We then talked at length about a fishing guide…long story
and finally decided on a guide on Wednesday afternoon, only to learn there’ll
be bad weather. So now I’m hot and
covered in sun screen I don’t need so I took a shower then for some reason,
jumped back on the website of the place we’re staying (Park Point Resort) and
saw that they have a ton of free kayaks for use whenever their guests want, for
free! All that mess and we could have
just taken kayaks from here. And now I’m
clean 😊
Ryan said it best - this vacation is weird. She’s convinced that all the Minnesotans are
potential serial killers. Now we’re
sitting around the cabin (I can’t keep my eyes open) – Nick’s asleep and the
kids are on their phones. I’m not sure
how the rest of the day will unfold but it’s still gorgeous here.
Tomorrow should be kayaks
Tuesday should be national park ferry trip to Kettle Falls
Wednesday should be boat trip with Phil (followed by
possible fishing trip)
Then we leave early Thursday morning. Here’s to rallying!
P.S. Nick grilled burgers on the deck for dinner and the kids took the kayaks out tonight and loved it!
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| Pic from deck of kids in kayaks on Lake Kabatogama |
The day ended on a high note for sure. We watched Bridesmaids (yes, I know, totally inappropriate) and headed to bed.
