Lake Superior

Such lovely clear clean (cold!) water.  Really beautiful spot… We camped Monday night at Little Sand Bay in Wisconsin.  The campground was awful - crowded...

Packing them in at the Campground

... but the beach was beautiful.

Sunset over the Apostle Islands from Little Sand Bay, WI

We had NO phone reception - so this is being sent from a coffee shop in Bayfield, a beautiful little lakeside town that reminds me of a New England seaside town.

Heading into the Porcupine Wilderness next, so will not have phone reception again for a few days… will bring you up to date later!

Amnicon Falls, Wisconsin

Barb, Theo and I really enjoyed Amnicon Falls for a couple days.  The river is flowing well, and lots of the "root beer" colored water was flowing over rocks and falls.  

Although the color of the water is not as enticing to me as the crystal clear waters of the Rockies and west coast, the temperature was much more appealing.  Yesterday was my birthday, so of course I had to take a birthday dip…Here are my root beer feet as I was going in.

Such a pretty coppery color - I thought maybe it would give my hair a nice shade of red ; )

Guess that would take quite a few more dips… Barb watched Theo back at camp while I had MY moment of Zen in the river.  He was happy to see me return, all drippy wet.

Got a cute little sketch of Barb done on a postcard when we were at the last park - she was curled up under a blanket reading outside…

This park is unusual in that there is a little restaurant to which one can walk - perfect for a birthday dinner!  …and they had outdoor seating which accommodated Theo.  So the three of us walked up along a wooded trail to go there last night and Barb bought me a birthday dinner at Charlie's Riverside Tavern.  

We've been eating so much healthy food that we decided to dive in to some onion rings…fresh, hot and home made.  The entire meal was much better than we had anticipated.  Fresh food well prepared.  Yum.

I hope to get another dip before we leave - I want to go behind the little falls at the other end.  We plan to do that on our way out today… Then we are off to see Lake Superior!  The sun is out and its warming up - you want it warm up there!  Water is so BRRRRRR cold.  Can't wait.  : )   … and I really want to see a porcupine.

Welcome to Wisconsin!

Barb and I stayed at Pattison State Park the last couple of days.  We left our last campground in Minnesota intending to stay at another park in Minnesota, in the Savannah National Forest, only about an hour away… we got there, drove about 5 miles down a gravel road, only a few campers there, but when we got out of the van, Theo was nearly carried off by the triangular flies!  Ack!!!!  Nope, not for us.  We dove back into Mac and spent 5 minutes swatting flies, then got out the atlas to check our options… Pattison was only another hour and a half.  We took off.

Was a pleasant surprise.  We were able to get a campsite and they had nice trails on which dogs are allowed and "root beer" colored waterfalls.  That description didn't sound appealing, but the falls were lovely.

These are the highest falls in Wisconsin.

Got some watercolors started there today, but nothing to show for it yet… stay tuned!

They didn't want dogs in the picnic area, but they were allowed on the trails, so they gave you a dog path to follow to the trails.  Pretty cute.

It was pretty rainy most of the time, but not hard enough that you couldn't walk in it.  Then as we started to pack up today, the sun came out.  That was nice, no fun to pack a tent in the rain.

Onward!  Eastward!  Towards the sun...

Leech Lake, Minnesota

I picked a campground in the Chipewa National Forest for the night.  As we were driving there, Barb saw a sign for "Leech Lake."  She said "Ewwww, that doesn't sound very inviting!"  I informed her that that was were we were going.  Oh.  

As it turns out when the lake was first discovered by French explorers they wrote that it was the  "lake full of bloodsuckers."  Fortunately for us, as swimmers at least, they made it into a huge reservoir, now the third largest lake in Minnesota, and the game fish ate all of the leeches.  Phew!  So of course I dove in!  You would think they might have changed the name, to something like "the lake of sparkling waters" or something...

We met some interesting guys along the way - here's Paul hanging out by the highway.  

This guy was in the campground...

Dawn at Stony Point Campground...

On the way, we stopped by a little post office in Osage to mail some postcards, and the little store next to it had a big sign that said "Broasted Chicken."   I suddenly realized I ws starving and nothing would taste better than broasted chicken.  It was 10 am.  With high hopes I entered the store and inquired whether the chicken was ready yet or not.  Oh no, the lady replied, not until 11… and the teenage boy next to me said "I have to go cook it."  Oh….well…. so I perused the aisles looking for an alternative.  I found some local organic eggs and bought those…I asked the lady as I was paying "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?  ...Now we know."   Not sure she was too impressed with my sparkling wit.  However, Barb was VERY impressed when I asked her if she wanted a fried egg. "What here?  by the side of the road?"  Yep!  Pretty cool, eh?

Order up in Mac.

Adieu North Dakota

Barb arrived safely in the wee hours of the morning and now we are off to Minnesota.  Haven't decided which park we're going to yet, but there are lots of choices in the 10,000 lakes state.

Stayed in a campground in a park in Fargo last night.  Wasn't bad - right by the river, but lots of traffic noise of course.  Shared a glass of wine with a nice couple from Quebec who are camping next to me in their VW camper van.

Here's Theo taking in the scents…

A little boy about 9 years old was fishing across the drive from my site.  His father and brother were about 30 feet further down…He sat there about 15 minutes and then called out to his dad:  "Well, it seems this is more a mental sport than a physical sport."  Smart kid.

Of sunflowers and oil, and the Missouri River...

Headed out of Theodore Roosevelt on Sunday.  Decided to take the "scenic route" (of course!) which went up along the eastern edge of the park for a ways, and then turned east.  I drove past huge sunflower fields!

Beautiful!

…and oil fields…

…not so beautiful.

…and a lot of cattle country.  There are lots of flies in North Dakota!  Glad I have my screens.

Found a sweet little campground on the "untamed section" of the Missouri River - that's how their website described it, because its not dammed here.  The water is much less muddy than other sections I've seen.  Theo liked it.  Me too.

There were no other campers there on a Sunday evening, so Theo got to go off leash for a bit.  I was just starting to think it might be just a little TOO empty, that maybe I should go up to the busier campground, when a truck pulling a boat with a bed load of kids and a dog pulled in and set up camp at the other end of the campground - just far enough away to still feel private, but nice to have someone else around.  Now it was just right… and I have electricity and internet - yay!

I collected another water sample for the water ministry (see my previous post).

Of birds and water...

I've been meaning to write more about the birds I see along the way.  Back when I was leaving Choteau, Montana, I passed the Freezout Lake (gotta love the name) waterfowl area, and I saw white pelicans…

I've been enjoying the Magpies too - they have a big personality - kinda like a cross between our Mockingbirds back at home with crows.  They are quite striking.  Here's a photo from Cornell University's excellent All About Birds website.  Take a look at their site to see more about these guys - pretty cool.

I've seen many different kinds of hawks, and at the Cottonwood campground in North Dakota a couple of evenings Nighthawks (not part of the hawk family) gathered over the meadow and grabbed bugs like swallows do.  Here's a shot from the same website:

As I was crossing eastern Montana there was quite a bit of roadkill (mostly rabbits) on the Big Sky Back County byway I was driving.  I did not see one vulture… someone told me it might be because the ranchers put out poison for pests that the vultures get, but I don't know.  It was strange.  I saw them again when I got to the Theodore Roosevelt National Park…

I've also been meaning to write about Water Ministry.  I received the newsletter from my church and there was a post from our minister saying that on August 30th she is going to do a sermon on water ministry.  Here is part of what she wrote:

...we believe that moments of ministry happen all the time, all around us—every single day—even though, most of the time, we don’t even notice them.
What is a moment of ministry? It’s a moment of connection, a moment of relationship, between you and another person, between you and the world around you, between you and the Great Mystery that holds and surrounds us all... It’s ...a moment that takes your breath away. 

This summer, as every summer, I challenge you to be on the lookout for moments of ministry. And when one happens, I challenge you to remember it. To help you remember the moments of ministry that you notice during the summer, I ask you to collect some water—water of ministry—any time that ministry happens. And then I ask you to bring your water and your stories to our service on August 30, so that we may gather our stories into the heart of our worshipping community, and our waters into a common bowl; so that we may carry them, and the blessings they represent, forward into our lives together in the year to come. 

I thought this sounded great!  Then my next reaction was that I was so sorry I hadn't gotten some water from Glacier National Park, where I certainly had some moments of ministry.  Then I looked around Mac - sure enough I still had a water bottle in the driver's door that had water from Glacier!  Yay!  I cleaned out a small bottle that had held vinegar, and carefully poured the water into it to take to the service.

Water from Glacier National Park