North Shore

In Minnesota, the North Shore is the north shore of Lake Superior. I've lived in Minnesota since 1991 and I think I may have been the only person in the state who hadn't vacationed on the North Shore before: I've driven through Duluth on my way to Bayfield, Wisconsin (which is also on Lake Superior, but the south side) but that's it.

So last week we finally remedied this. We went camping for four nights in Tettegouche State Park, which is just outside a town called Silver Bay (and while the North Shore is very scenic, Silver Bay is quite possibly the least cute and most thoroughly uncharming little town I've ever seen: it has a taconite plant, some houses, and a strip mall) and then drove the rest of the way up to Grand Marais (almost) to stay with jiawen at her parents' cabin. The cabin get-together was originally supposed to be a somewhat larger group gathering but everyone else who initially expressed interest wound up bialing, so it was just us, and Rachel. (You people who didn't come missed a really fun weekend.)

The weather was perfect except for rain on Friday morning, and the camping was pretty idyllic aside from the swarms of yellowjackets that descended whenever we tried to eat anything. Yellowjackets prefer protein (Wikipedia informs me that in late summer, they switch over to looking for sugar, but apparently these yellowjackets hadn't read that entry); on the second night we ate salmon (bought frozen from the grocery store, thawed in the cooler, and cooked over a fire) and the hordes really descended. We had a little bit left, so we kept it in the cooler and at each meal would set out some fish on a plate as a peace offering. This actually worked fairly well. We still had yellowjackets buzzing us, but usually after circling a few times new arrivals would notice the fish and settle down to eat that.

We went to Split Rock Light House one day. You can walk down to the shores of Lake Superior from there. Lake Superior is about 53 degrees this time of year. I packed bathing suits for the girls mostly so that they could go wading, but no, my insane family all went swimming. Everyone but me. And yelled at me (and everyone else on the beach) that the water was GREAT, really refreshing.

The visit with Rachel was really fun. She is an astronomy geek with an awesome telescope: it was clear at least part of the time on both nights so we could look at stuff. The first night, it was cloudy when the girls went to bed so we tried waking them up at midnight once the sky cleared. That did not work. Molly was at least awake enough to peer through the telescope, but just barely. Kiera curled up in a ball and cried until we put her back to bed, and remembered none of this the next day and told Ed really indignantly that he should have tried harder to wake her up. The second night, it cleared up before they went to bed, so they both got to look at the stars while awake and coherent. They got to look at Jupiter, and could see the bands of clouds (no red spot, it was pointed the wrong way, alas) and four of Jupiter's moons. Both of the girls mentioned this as a highlight of the whole trip, when I asked on Sunday, so I'm glad the sky cooperated on Saturday night. Ed and I could stay up later so we saw all kinds of stuff, including the Andromeda galaxy, M13 (I think), a really pretty binary star where the stars were different colors, and the craters of the moon.

Saturday afternoon, we took the girls to a spot Rachel suggested for rock collecting -- a spot on the Lake Superior shore known for thomsonite. Thomsonite is a rock with tiny geodes tucked into lots of little bubble holes in the rock; it's very cool stuff. We also walked along the Cascade River, which gets its name because of its abundance of waterfalls. And on Saturday night, while eating in Grand Marais at a waterside restaurant, we saw an otter swim up alongside the dock.

It was a very cool trip.

Miscellaneous observations:

* It's kind of funny to drive for five hours and find yourself surrounded by other people from your home city who also drove five hours. In Grand Marais, Kiera ran into a friend from day camp, and Ed ran into a coworker.

* I sometimes worry about Molly's cold tolerance (specifically, I worry that she doesn't monitor herself well and may wind up with hypothermia) but it really is rather convenient to have a child you can dip in Lake Superior when she falls down in the mud and gets dirty.

* No matter how many towels I pack when going camping, I find myself short of towels at some point. The same is true of socks.

* The chipmunks at Tettegouche Campground lack any proper respect for humans. This was particularly true of the one we named Pancake Boy, who came running out of the woods to dive into our fire ring (it had no fire in it at the time) to retrieve a burned pancake Ed had tossed in there to cool off. The bears, fortunately, are more shy.

* We went without pillows and regretted it. The tiny variety/hardware/greeting card/craft supplies store in Silver Bay stocked both cheap pillows and cheap pillowcases, and the owner cheerfully told me that they were one of her biggest sellers, along with air mattresses and warm hats.