What I did over Thanksgiving vacation:
So first of all Rob, Carrie, Sarah, Mike, Zach, Kathie and my Dad came up the weekend of the 18th and 19th for the end of the futility that has been Iowa’s football season. That week we lost to a very mediocre Minnesota team. It remains to bee seen who we will lose to in the Alamo bowl but that should be settled this weekend.
Other than the football game there was lots of fun activity, going to woodworking stores, eating and seeing the new James Bond movie. We had a chocolate cake from the ‘50s grill to celebrate all the Novemberish birthdays, even if everyone couldn’t be present.

Sunday after everyone cleared out Sandy and I loaded up our rented truck and I headed up to our property for a week of working on what is now referred to as the cabin (formerly the sauna). Sandy had to work Monday-Wednesday so I was on my own until Thursday.
I arrived well after dark (it gets dark just after 4pm up there) unpacked the truck and arranged a place to sleep in the cabin. It was a cold night, six degrees but Lucy and I managed ok. The next morning the lake had frozen over completely and as the sun came up the ice started expanding and there were about two hours worth of interesting sounds coming from the ice. I wish I had a recording of it.
After the cold night my goal was to get the wood burning stove installed so I’d have a heat source for the remaining nights. Of course the rest of the week the temperatures were in the 30s and 40s for the most part even at night. Most of the work revolved around installing the chimney and stove pipe and then insulating the attic area. It was a long day but I managed to get through it all.
Much of the next two days were spent installing the pine tongue and groove paneling we had bought at Menard’s back in October. Wednesday and Thursday I built and installed framing for the windows and door. In the early afternoon on Thursday I took a “shower” which consisted of a five-gallon bucket of water I had warmed on the woodstove. I stood out on the deck in the sun and washed up as well as I could, it was chilly.
After the shower I drove out to the gate and unlocked it so Sandy and my Mom could get in when they arrived. I saw lots of wolf tracks along the road on the way out to the gate, I’m pretty sure most of them were less than 24 hours old.
After that I went back and removed and reinstalled the windows since they had just been temporarily mounted in October and then finished up some of the trim stuff inside. Sandy and Mom arrived around 7pm I think, I had been hoping they’d show up with a nice Thanksgiving feast but no one had the energy to do much cooking at that point. So Sandy whipped up some pasta and we saved the grilled turkey breast for the next night.
Friday and Saturday were spent putting the “siding” back on the outside, this was a big job and I didn’t really expect to finish it but Sandy became kind of fixated on getting it done. She yelled at me a few times to get back to work, and with a few additional hours Sunday morning we managed to get through it.


Here's a bit of what the inside looks like now.

This is the finished product outside.
We did manage to have some fun while we were there, Sunday morning my Mom and I (accompanied by Lucy) went skating for about an hour. The ice was thinner than I would’ve preferred but was at least two inches thick everywhere we went and it was nice and smooth.

Saturday morning Sandy and I walked over to visit our neighbor Mr. Nelson. He directed his nephew to give us a tour of the place which was interesting. He has two cabins a workshop a sauna and an outhouse. One of the cabins was his original building on the lot. It originally came from a resort on Brule lake that closed in the ‘60s Jim purchased it at a government auction, disassembled it and hauled it by hand into his lot where he put it back together. It’s always kind of an interesting lesson in local history being around Jim.

Sandy and I have new email addresses.
I don't want to print the whole thing here on account of the spambots. But if you use the the beginning of our old addresses followed by @comcast.net you should be able to get either one of us.

11/5/06
OK so obviously it's not a good idea to make a post like the previous one and then not follow up in a timely fashion.
There has been a lot of concern and questions about Lucy. Let me state for the record that she is fine. Well she seems to be fine anyway. It's been almost two weeks since her little episode and we haven't seen any similar symptoms since. If anything she seems a little perkier than she was before our week up there. She's been going out for runs with Sandy and has actually been running (as opposed to exploring and rolling around on her itchy back). We're hopeful that the whole thing was caused by something she ate or drank and that it won't happen again.
Also if anyone has been avoiding calling us our phone is working again. It turned out that the problem was in the wire that goes from the phone pole to our house.
Here's an update on what we did during our week up on our property:
The goal was to turn the "sauna" into a well insulated small cabin that we can use year 'round but particularly in the winter if we want to ski in and spend a weekend. Here's what it looked like before we started

It looks cute (especially with the little icicles along the edge of the roof) but trust me it was a total dump. I bet there were at least two pounds of mouse crap in there plus you could see right through the walls in a lot of places.
So we made a trip to Menards which Sandy hated (she claims we were there for 3 hours) bought a bunch of supplies and rented a truck and headed north.

The weather was very cooperative most of the week, it did snow a few times but never very much and it did rain one afternoon which was kind of frustrating. Here's what the tent looked like our first morning.

We stripped the sauna down to the framing cleaning out all the poop infested insulation and the junky stuff inside it. One of our main goals was to install a regular exterior door because we wanted it to be airtight and well insulated. The problem was that the thing was only 77 inches floor to ceiling and a standard door is 81.5 inches tall. So to make the door fit we had to raise up the roof. We accomplished this by bracing up all the framing and then lifting the whole thing up by 11.5 inches and then re-attaching the corners. You can see in this picture that it's in the process of being lifted and that the 4x4s on the corners have been cut and are lifted away from the floor.

Once the lift was done we removed all the studs (except the corners) and replaced them with full length studs. Originally it was my plan to take the full length studs out of the house, but after looking I decided there wasn't anything in that place that could be removed without causing the whole thing to collapse. So I made a trip to town and got some new studs and other supplies.
We had bought a door at Menards and saved the windows when we remodeled the kitchen. Here's some of the new framing in place and more in progress. Sandy was beginning to work on the foam insulation

We were really getting tight for time at this point so everything was a big rush and kind of stressful. But with a good boost of help from my Mom and Dan we managed to get the fiberglass insulation up on the inside and the tyvek on and the windows in place. Then on Sunday morning we got the door installed and the Sandy got the tyvek finished and taped on the seams. So this is what it looks like right now

I'm hoping to go back up the week of Thanksgiving to finish up some things like installing the woodstove and the paneling inside.

10/24/06
As I write this I’m sitting in our tent on our deck at Kemo lake. It’s 7pm and quite dark, there are lots of stars out. I’m eating some cold Pagliai’s sausage pizza and just got done reading some articles about the Iowa Michigan game the other day (downloaded before we came up here.) Lucy is here with me, curled up in a little ball with her tail over her nose trying to keep warm. It’s 28.4 degrees and there’s some snow on the ground and some ice on the lake, neither an appreciable amount.
Sandy left for town about two hours ago, she’s got a birdwatching thing tomorrow and Thursday so it’s just me and the dog until then.
We took vacation this week to come up here and try to convert our “sauna” that came with our property into a small, well insulated, wood stove heated cabin that we can ski to in the winter and spend a few days enjoying the alternating quiet and snowmobiles. We really only enjoy the quiet.
We came up Sunday morning hauling a bunch of building materials and tools in a rented Dodge pickup truck, it handles the “driveway” much better than our Jettas do.
The temperature got down into the upper teens Sunday night so it was chilly in the tent. Sandy slept with her new hat on which looked funny (too dark to get a picture) but we were warm enough in our sleeping bags and Lucy just curled up against my legs for a little extra warmth.
We got a fair amount of work done Sunday and Monday, I’ll do a separate post about the process of rehabbing this thing. I’m trying to do step by step photos as we go.
In the early afternoon on Monday Sandy noticed that Lucy was acting strangely. At first it seemed like she was frightened about something. She’d be walking along and suddenly stop like she saw something in her way and then take a few steps back. My first thought was there might be wolves in the area, out of sight but close enough for Lucy to smell. This had me a little alarmed for about 10 seconds until I remembered that wolves are a lot more scared of us than we are of them. It also quickly became clear that Lucy was not actually seeing or smelling anything but rather that she was disoriented and confused.
She kept doing this thing that Sandy called stopping short as she walked aimlessly around the driveway. She had trouble going up and down even one or two steps and would walk very close to some things like bushes and the house and shy away from other things.
We observed this for about ten minutes while we discussed what was wrong with her and what our options were. Our theories were vision problems, hallucinations, stroke, aneurism etc…
We finally decided we needed to get her some medical attention so we loaded up the truck and headed for Grand Marais. After 45 minutes on the road we were at Obie and Kathleen’s house in town. Kathleen let us use the phone to try to find a vet. There’s only one in Grand Marais and she doesn’t deal with emergencies, she suggested we go to Two Harbors or Duluth and wished us luck. We called Cindy Hansen to see if she had any suggestions, she said the Grand Marais vet was good but kind of difficult and if she was being uncooperative the alternatives in Two Harbors and Duluth were good too. We also called my Mom on her cell phone, she’s in Grand Marais with Dan on a weeks vacation, being a nurse and former resident of Grand marais we thought she might be helpful.
She suggested we meet her at their cabin which we did. The dog’s behavior wasn’t getting any better. My Mom made some calls to some local friends but came up with the same result we had already gotten. We decided to make the drive to the emergency pet clinic in Duluth.
Lucy was relatively calm in the car I think because she couldn’t move around much. It was a long drive and was after 6pm when we got there.
I just went out to take a look at the stars before getting in my sleeping bag, it’s 7:45 and totally dark. The sky is full of stars and it’s totally silent. Much different than a Spring or Summer night when there are lots of frogs and insects making noise. The only thing I can hear right now are noises I’m making and the dog breathing. If I stop typing I can hear a sound which I assume has something to do with blood circulating through my ears or something. It’s also feeling much colder although the thermometer says 27.5, I suppose it’s because I’ve been sitting still for so long.
Anyway, back to Lucy’s condition. We got checked in and the assistant did an interview with us and took Lucy’s temperature then the vet came in. He was quite nice and as helpful as he could be under the circumstances. He checked her vision, looked in her ears all the usual stuff and couldn’t fine a visible external cause. We had a lot of talk about things she could’ve ingested, rat poison and anti-freeze in particular. We brought up the rat poison because there is some in the cabin but we aren’t aware of any that she could get at, it’s all on the 2nd floor and she can’t get up there. He didn’t feel her symptoms were indicative of rat poison anyway. Anti-freeze seemed more likely from her behavior but we can’t figure out a way that she could’ve gotten into anything like that up here.
The vet felt that the two most likely causes were some toxin that we weren’t aware of and we all agreed that that wasn’t very likely or some sort of neurological problem, probably a tumor of some sort in her brain. He felt like it was probably a tumor and suggested several diagnostic things we could do but pointed out that unless we were willing to have brain surgery done on her there wasn’t a lot to be gained by things like x-rays and cat scans. He further pointed out that brain surgery on a 12 year old dog is pretty traumatic and might not be any more humane than letting things run their course.
We asked lots of questions and had lots of discussion about possible toxins, ran a blood screen to rule out liver problems/enzyme imbalances (negative) and after some more thought talked about what happens if it is a brain tumor. Sounds like we could expect her condition to deteriorate fairly quickly possibly over a few months and have some things like seizures to deal with as well. Basically all we can do is wait to see how things progress.
The last thing the vet said was that we should hope for it to be a toxin of some kind in which case she might recover relatively quickly but that we should be prepared for the more likely probability of it being a tumor, and that we should get her looked at again by our regular vet in a couple weeks.
With that we got back in the car, hit a Quiznos (which I can never go to without thinking of that weird commercial with the Furby looking things singing the weird songs) and headed back to Grand Marais.
Dan had arranged a cabin for us at Anderson’s cabins in Croftville so we didn’t have to drive all the way back up to the lake that night. We put Lucy on the bed with us so she’d be more comfortable, she was very alert and edgy constantly looking around at things in the dark, but after a couple of hours of that she fell asleep around midnight as did Sandy finally. She was kind of twitchy during the night but seemed to sleep soundly.
This morning I got up took a shower and took the Lucy outside while Sandy took a shower. She (Lucy) seemed much more together after a good night’s sleep the stopping short and drunken wandering had vanished. She was still pretty unsure of her ability to go up and down steps and it took a lot of coaxing to get her down the rocky hill to the beach along Lake Superior to go for a walk. But once we were down on the gravel she semed pretty sure of herself. Everyone was pleasantly surprised and hopeful after the dire feelings the night before, but still apprehensive of how things might go over time.
We had breakfast at the South of the Border café and then after a quick trip to Joyne’s drove back up here to try to get back on track with the sauna projct.
Lucy has been good the rest of the day today, eating and drinking normally and resting a lot. She even jumped into and out of the truck a couple of times which is a pretty hefty jump, it sits up really high.
So at this point I’m hopeful and worried at the same time about her. Trying to watch her behavior for signs of a problem and probably overanalyzing everything she does. We checked the house again for rat poison and Sandy checked Lucy’s poop (with a stick) for any evidence.
It was a pretty rough afternoon and evening for all three of us, and my Mom as well, hopefully everything will work out for the best.
OK, now it’s 8:34 and my fingers are totally numb, it’s really difficult to type and I’m starting to shiver. I’m going to get in my sleeping bag and try to warm up and get some sleep. 26.8 outside.

Our phone seems to be squirrely, when someone calls it only rings about a half ring then it's done. If we answer it everything seems fine but if not the caller just seems to get one ring and then static. If we're here and we hear it ring we'll answer, but if we're not it won't let you leave a message.
It might be best to email.
We're going to be up at our property this week (the 22nd-29th) so we won't be reachable anyway. We're going to try to turn our "sauna" into a winter worthy cabin. Think warm thoughts, we'll be sleeping in a tent all week.

Betsy left a comment to the last post about junk in the scout. I didn't take a picture of the junk but rest assured that there's a bunch of junk in there. Most of the junk is used parts but there are some interesting things like RCA cables and some plastic bases (like a cheap version of the bases they used to use in gym class for kickball.)
Today I managed to get the thing running for a bit. I don't have the fuel system totally finished yet but if you run a hose from a gas can to the fuel pump you can make things work as long as you don't try to drive anywhere. The battery is shot so I had to jump it from the TDI but it ran under it's own power for about 5 minutes. I had to keep the choke engaged about half way or it would die. Looks like I'll have to figure out how to tune an engine.
Here's a picture of the carburetor before I put it back together:


Here's a picture of the wonderwife running the TC's marathon on her 35th birthday. Her sister Sarah is in there somewhere too...

Her time was 4:31 or something like that, you can probably find it on the internet if you want. It wasn't her best ever but she seemed happy with it. After the race we had a big party with beer and homemade pizza.
All the activity helped me get over the football loss last Saturday.

OK, Pete has asked for more pictures.


I'll put on one of the carburetor on after I get back from the football game.
Go Hawks!

Old projects:

New projects:

So here's the quick version of the rest of the trip.
Went to Tomsonite beach, showered.
Went to Naniboujou for dinner, Henry threw 4337 rocks into lake Superior while we waited.
Went back and slept at Tomsonite beach.
Got up the next day, went to Grand Marais. Had donuts, went to Sivertson's etc...
Drove up to our property, everyone agreed that it was a dump with a nice view. Had a cookout and camped there that night.
I accidently scared the crap out of Henry that night while he was in the tent, hopefully he won't be scarred for life.
The next day we got up and drove back to Minneapolis with a quick stop at Gooseberry falls to see the sights.
We had some chocolate cake from the 50's Grill. Henry learned how to get people with the squirt bottle:

The next day everyone went home.
That's what we did on our summer vacation.
The end.

Thursday, day five.
So this was our last morning and another short travel day so I was planning on sleeping in. I woke up at dawn and was feeling very comfortable and relaxed in my sleeping bag. Just as I was dozing off there was a rumble of thunder in the distance. Then I started worrying about the food and equipment packs getting all wet and was unable to go back to sleep. I decided I'd go out quick and gather everything up and put it under the tarp so it would stay dry. And then I could get back in the tent and sleep until the storm blew over. Just then it started sprinkling so I decided I better hurry. Running out in my underwear I started grabbing stuff and throwing it under the tarp, the mosquitoes had not decided to sleep in and were happily searching for places to bite that I couldn't reach. Soon I was back in the tent only slightly damp and moderately bitten up. I got back in my sleeping bag and was just getting my heart rate slowed down when I heard Rob and Carrie moving around in their tent. Pretty soon it became apparent that they were packing up. I told them to go back to sleep but they were having none of it. So rather than sleeping in we started packing up our stuff too.

We ate our oatmeal under the tarp trying to stay out of the light rain. Soon we were packed up and heading east toward the portage, the rain stopped before we started the portage. The air was warm and incredibly humid as we started hiking, throw in all the water dripping off the trees and brush and a few dozen mosquitoes and it was kind of unpleasant. But after a portage or two the wind started picking up and that helped a lot, it was still warm though. We had a 300 rod portage for a warm up and then the 480 from Zenith down to Lujenida Lake, it's a killer no matter what the conditions.

There's nothing worse (on a canoe trip) than carrying a canoe while hot, tired, uncomfortable with about 12 mosquitoes buzzing your arms, head and neck and knowing that you still have 20 minutes or so before you get to the end of the portage. At one point Rob stumbled and almost fell, that probably would have been worse… Even Lucy was having a hard time with her pack, it was heavier on one side than the other so it was hanging crooked. Every once in a while she'd stop and give me a look but I was just as irritated so she eventually stopped to wait for Sandy, maybe hoping that she'd fix it.

By the time we got to Lujenida the sun was coming out and there was a nice breeze and all the frustration was immediately forgotten. We stopped to look at the "Viking dolmen" which Rob and Carrie seemed unimpressed by. As we left Rob and Carrie managed to get their canoe stuck on a rock he got a little testy while trying to get them unstuck, Carrie just said "serenity now" and ignored him. Here's a picture of Rob trying to peel out to get them off the rock.


As we cruised down Kelso there were suddenly people everywhere, we must've seen five or six groups on Kelso alone. With the wind coming out of the south Alton was kind of rough which seemed to make Rob and Carrie a little edgy but once we got across to the east side of the lake it was a little more sheltered. We pulled into the portage and decided to have one last wilderness meal so we parked all our stuff and hiked up to the big rock next to the Alton side of the portage.

It was a very leisurely lunch, we had to finish off the Skittles, Peanut M&Ms and jerky among other things. We were entertained by 3 people in pith helmets paddling around near the portage. It seemed that they were nervous about the wind and waves out past the peninsula that protects the portage so they just went back and forth randomly. It doesn't sound that amusing now, maybe we had been away from civilization too long.…

Anyway, we portaged across to Sawbill and fought the wind all the way down to the landing then made the last portage up to the store. Where we found Betsy and Pete in the bathroom changing Henry's diaper.

They had just picked up my car from Kawishiwi and transported it to Sawbill and were getting ready to go out for Henry's first canoe paddle. We sent them out on their adventure and unpacked our stuff, took the obligatory end of trip picture and then headed down to Thomsonite Beach to take some showers.

Wednesday, day four.
This was going to be a little longer day so we were a bit more businesslike in the morning, plus we had developed something of a system by this point. We ate our oatmeal and got packed up and on the water relatively quickly. At some point during the packing up the twin engine airplane showed up doing it's twice hourly fly-by. Just before we left we decided to do one more team photo.

As we paddled down the long southeast arm of Little Sag we went past an island that had a bunch (like 20) of new latrines stacked up in plain sight on the shore. They were a new style, still fiberglass but boxier than the old ones. We were kind of irritated that they left them laying out in the open like that, it always used to be that they'd hide stuff like that back in the woods until they were ready to use it.

There was fire damage all along the left hand shore, but it was a bit more spotty than it had been in the northeast corner of the lake. There were lots of cedars along the shoreline that had been spared. On the portage we couldn't really see any signs of the fire but once were out on Mora (the next lake) we could see it again. It was spotty but you could see significant pockets of damage all along the northern parts of the lake.

We turned south here heading for Mesaba and away from the fire zone, although we could still see that plane circling the fire for a few more lakes.

The weather was great all day and we were making good time so we didn't stop to eat lunch until we got to our site on Mesaba. There aren't any great sites on this lake, we stayed in the center one. Rob and Carrie went swimming again, I can't remember if Sandy went or not. I took a nice nap in Rob's hammock. Later Rob conked out in the hammock and I snuck up on him and took some pictures, I think he was in a coma again.

In the afternoon we watched a beaver swim back and forth past our site. Later we were entertained by Loonapalooza, named by Rob. This consisted of three adult loons having some kind of disagreement. It appeared that two of the loons were trying to chase away or escape from the third one it wasn't totally clear which. There was lots of splashing and calling, eventually they all three flew away to continue their disagreement elsewhere or go their separate ways, again, I'm not sure which.

Dinner for Rob and I was a Lipton noodles and chicken-y sauce to which we added a retort pouch of chicken. Sandy and Carrie had some beans-n-tortillas thing they concocted, there was gas.

Tuesday, day three.
This was going to be our shortest day, Makwa to Little Saganaga so no one was in much of a hurry. We had oatmeal for breakfast and then lazed around for a while before beginning a leisurely process of packing up our equipment.

We were anticipating the traditional site we stay at on Little Sag would be closed because of the Cavity lake fire but we weren't sure. So we decided to tour the lake a bit to check on that site and scope out the other options. We paddled north, up the west side of the lake checking out sites along the way. We found a really cool looking one on an island but decided to go check out the traditional site before making our final decision.

As we paddled up the lake we started seeing signs of the fire along the northeast side of the lake. Lots of blackened and brown trees right down to the shoreline. There were a few small clusters of trees right next to the lake that the fire skipped but generally speaking everything was burned even the big towering white pines had burned.

We went over to the northern-most site on the eastern shore of the lake which was pretty much in the center of the burned section of shoreline. We didn't get out of the canoes but paddled right up to the site. Pretty much everything had burned even the pine needles and leaves on the ground.

We turned south toward the site we usually stay at and decided to have lunch there. It's kind of a sheltered site below a rock cliff, the fire had burned to the edge of the cliff but hadn't managed to get down into the lower part of the site. There was a sign on a tree in the site that said the site was closed for the remainder of the summer.

There's a trail that leads from the site up to the top of the cliff so I went up there to see what it looked like. Along the trail I could see lots of boot prints and cut trees and stuff, I'm sure these were left behind by the firefighters. It was fairly apparent that they had worked hard to prevent the fire from burning down into the campsite itself.

Once on top of the cliff I could see a long way to the east, at least a mile, everything that direction was burned, almost no green at all.

From up there I could also look to the northwest shore of Little Sag and see where the fire had stopped. There was a line extending north away from the lake, brown on one side and green on the other.

South of the campsite it was burned as far as I could see but that wasn't very far.

I was impressed and disappointed at how severe the damage was. A lot of pictures I had seen while the fire was actually burning showed a very patchy burn pattern that was sparing lots of trees. I was also under the impression that the fire had been running out of steam by the time it had gotten to Little Sag, it rained a few times and the wind was favorable (from the SW) at that time but apparently there was enough fuel in the area to keep the fire burning pretty hot despite the conditions.

I'm sure there will be lots of green ground cover right away next Spring, but it's going to be a long time before that part of the lake has any substantial trees living on it. If you look at the lake as the face of a clock with north being 12 the fire consumed the majority of land between 11 and 4.

We ate lunch down on the rocky area right next to the lake.

After that we decided to paddle back into the wind across the lake to that cool island campsite we had seen earlier. A Forest Service Beaver flew right over us as we were getting close to the site, we watched it for a minute and then as we resumed paddling we noticed that while we had been exploring and eating someone had snuck in and stolen the island site from us. It figures, we'd gone most of two days without seeing anyone and when we do they were in our campsite.

We checked out a few more sites before selecting one down in the southeast corner of the lake. Rob was very determined to find a site exposed to the wind so that we wouldn't have to worry about bugs and this one worked pretty well until the wind died at sunset. But even then the bugs weren't too bad.

There was an airplane that flew by about twice an hour for most of the afternoon, it was a blue and white twin engine thing and appeared to be flying around the perimeter of the fire. I suspect they were using infrared equipment to look for hot spots. Later a helicopter flew up the northeast shore just at treetop level. And occasionally a Beaver would fly over too.

After camp was set up we all went for a swim, even Sandy this time. Then there was a long period of napping and relaxing. I eventually started making dinner and Sandy and Carrie got up and began hanging the bear pack.

This site may have been good for avoiding bugs but there weren't many good choices for hanging the food pack. Eventually Rob got involved and got the rope stuck in the tree we were trying to use. Once dinner was ready I started helping with the food pack too, it was starting to get dark so there was some sense of urgency. We eventually got the rope unstuck and then finally got it over a good branch. It was a pain to get set up but it would've taken a bear on stilts to get our food that night.

After we got the ropes up we ate our Tuna Helper which was still remarkably warm. It was quite dark by the time we were done eating and cleaning up so Sandy got out her constellation chart and we all spent 45 minutes looking at the sky.

Monday, day two.
The sky was clear in the morning so the first thing everyone did was hang up their wet stuff from the day before, we actually got most of our stuff mostly dry by the time we had to pack up. While that was going on I made breakfast which consisted of english muffin sandwiches (eggs cheese and canadian bacon) they took a while to make but were tasty and we weren't in a hurry.

Rob was amused by Lucy's habit of taking the shortest path to the lake to get a drink because it involved going straight down the "cliff" we were on. Then she'd wade out chest deep in the water to get a drink, she's always had her own way of doing things.

Once everything was packed up and in the canoes we set off, one canoe to the west and one to the East. We regrouped for a second, looked at the maps and decided East was the more efficient way to go.

There was a strong steady wind from the southwest and as we paddled through the center of Malberg it was right at our backs. As you head that direction (northeast) toward the portage the lake the lake constricts down to a very narrow spot and then widens out to a long channel up to the portage. As we approached the narrow spot the wind was getting funneled in by the shoreline making it blow harder and harder as we got closer to the bottleneck. It was a pretty cool effect, as we went through the narrowest spot it was almost like being a cork getting shot out of a champagne bottle.

Travel was pretty uneventful, we might have run into one party coming the other direction but I can't remember for sure. We did portage through a section of blowdown from the July '99 straight line wind. It was pretty dramatic, even carrying a canoe I could see lots of downed trees, there were very few left that had trunks over 5-6" in diameter.

Our objective for the day was to get to Makwa. It's a lake I like a lot, it's deep, has lake trout, is far enough in that you don't see many hosers there and has a really awesome campsite. We got the good campsite which is on a big rock outcrop on the western side of the lake. There's a huge cliff that tapers up from the site until it's about 45' straight down to the water, it's scary to stand up there and look down but it's an awesome view out to the east. Down on the site itself the water is really deep right off the rock so you can jump right and swim without having to worry about hitting the bottom or a log or anything.

Once we set up camp and had some lunch Sandy, Carrie and Rob were laying in the sun on the rock near the water. I decided I was going to go for a swim and took a running jump off the rock into the water hoping to surprise and splash the three sunbathers. They were surprised, but the splashing was a total failure. Eventually Rob and Carrie joined me in the lake, Rob was kind of a chicken about it. It took him about 5 minutes to work up the courage to get in, it was almost like when he was in 3rd grade and couldn't get into the pool very fast. Sandy spent the time taking pictures and enjoying the sun.

Later in the afternoon I hiked up to the big cliff to see the sights, I found a big white pine high up on the hillside (not right on the cliff) and climbed 25' or so up that. I was hoping that the combination of the hill and the tree would get me high enough to see up to Little Sag. I was hoping to get a preview of the fire damage in that area. I could see a long ways but not that far, mostly I just got a lot of pine sap on my hands.

I went back to camp and gathered everyone up Rob was taking a nap in the tent and had apparently slipped into a coma. After Carrie went in and revived him we all went up to the cliff to take a look at the view. The sun was beginning to set and was illuminating the trees on the East side of the lake nicely.

Rob and I were on our own for dinner since Sandy and Carrie were having some vegetarian thing. We had some Betty Crocker cheesy potatos to which we added some diced ham, it was ok but not awesome.

Sunday, the canoe trip begins:
Sometime around 4AM it started raining on us. I know the approximate time because we had left the fly partly off the tent (so we could see out the windows) and I had to run out in my underwear to pull it down. (The rainfly, not my underwear.)

By 7AM it was raining hard. We decided the best course of action was to throw everything in the car and get back up to Sawbill but quick. We threw the disassembled tents on the roof since they were so wet and crammed everything else in and were soon back at Sawbill.
Here's a picture of the ride up to Sawbill:


The workshop was open and unoccupied so we went in there to repack everything which worked out well. I lectured everyone to watch out for people (Bill Hansen) trying to put random objects into our packs but the rain seemed to keep the snoosers away.


After some visiting with Bill and Cindy and checking on the weather everything went back in the car, canoes went on the roof, we made one last swing through the store for breakfast (Egekvist donuts and OJ) and we were off to Kawishiwi.

The drive was uneventful, we unloaded on the landing, took the traditional pre-trip team photo
and hit the water.
Our goal was to get to Malberg for the first night and then figure out where to go next.
The water was extremely low, I've never seen it so low. In the boggy areas going north out of Kawishiwi we were practically dragging on the bottom all the time and most of the portages were extended because you couldn'’t paddle all the way to the normal portage.

To make matters worse after about 3 or 4 portages we caught up with a group of four canoes and 9 dingdongs that we couldn'’t get around for a while. They were very slow getting across the portages and in the narrow channels we were in we couldn't pass them on the water. Once we got to a bigger lake we zipped right around them and then met up with another group of 9 on the next portage. They weren't as annoying and let us go right around them, although they did do some kind of weird chant before launching from the portage.

I thought maybe we should develop our own team chant, and Rob had a great suggestion unfortunately it's far too profanity ridden to print here. If you'd like to hear it sometime let me know and I'll recite it for you. For some reason Carrie and Sandy didn't seem to think we were the kind of group that needed a chant so we dropped the topic. After we got north of Polly lake we didn't seem to see many people anyway so it would have only been wildlife that would have been able to enjoy our chant.

On the portage into Malberg we stopped and walked around the river that's usually flowing along the portage, it turns out the water was so low there were only a few puddles in the riverbed. I've never seen it like that.

Eventually we moved on toward the campsite we wanted, a high rocky site overlooking a narrow channel just west of the center of Malberg. As we paddled up to the site in the rain an otter was checking us out. He'd dive and then come back up periodically to do his little sneezing thing at us. We set up camp and made spaghetti for dinner.

We hadn't really made up our minds where to go from this point so I suggested some options and then left the other three to work it out. The final decision was that we would go up to Little Saganaga and then back to Sawbill.

Catching up

The canoe trip:
OK, so two weeks ago (August 11) Rob and Carrie drove up here, arriving late on Friday. Sandy had class on Saturday, so the three of us had the day to do other stuff.
Rob and Carrie met a couple of friends from St. Paul for breakfast. I spent almost two hours cleaning the inside of my car for the trip. I'm not sure I had ever really carefully cleaned this car and I've had it over three years now. Lucy rides in it a lot so it was kind of filthy.
After Rob and Carrie got back from breakfast we started getting everything organized for the trip. We made a big pile of stuff in the living room and then went to run some errands.
First we went to an army surplus store because Rob wanted to get some pants to wear on the trip. We probably would've stayed there longer and played with the hand grenades and whatnot but the guy behind the counter looked like he might bayonet you if you pissed him off. Rob didn't find any pants he liked but I did, they're plain green army type pants with the little adjustable slider things on the sides in case I turn into a fatso.
Then we had to go get biodiesel for the trip. I filled up my car and some 5 gallon fuel cans. Then we went to the grocery store.
Rob was very spazzy at the grocery store. Carrie and I had a list and we were trying to work off that, Rob kept showing up with weird things like Shark Bites or inventing alternate meal plans that would have left Sandy with nothing to eat but scalloped potatoes which she doesn't really like. He did occasionally have a good idea too like the Lipton chicken-y noodle thing to which we added a pouch of precooked chicken.
So right before we got to the checkout I said "let's see who can guess closest to the actual price." I thought Carrie would win since she seemed to be actually paying attention to how much things cost, and she was on the Price is Right once. I guessed around $120, and I think she was $10-15 below that, Rob guessed $168 which was obviously too high. Well it turns out the bill was $165.69 (I just checked the receipt) needless to say Rob was hard to be around for about 5 minutes.
After we got back to the house we went into high gear getting all the equipment packed up and put into the car. With four of us plus Lucy in the Jetta Wagon there wasn't a lot of Room for equipment. We had pretty much every cubic inch filled.
By this time it was about 5 o'clock. Sandy got home and had a couple more items to pack, Rob and Carrie tried to do a little last minute online banking and we were off.
As soon as we got on the interstate I remembered that I'd left the cooler of refrigerated food in the refrigerator. We took the roundabout way back to the house, I grabbed the food and four ice cream sandwiches and we were (once again) off.
We stopped at a Culvers in Forest Lake or somewhere to get root beers for everyone and dinner for Sandy (the rest of us had gotten food at the Byerly's deli). Then it was pretty much a straight shot to the end of the Sawbill Trail.
Where there were no open campsites.
It was about 11pm, we drove through the campground a few times to make sure we hadn't missed an open site. We had, but a more opportunistic car following us snatched it before we could. After watching a couple of young deer try to figure out how to avoid our headlights we drove back down the trail a mile to an old logging road.
I drove in about 100 yards and dragged the car over a giant pointed rock that apparently didn't do any damage. It sounded bad though. We stopped there and pitched our tents right in the road and went to sleep.

Here's an interesting little tidbit about Sawbill Canoe Outfitters I found.
http://www.restroomratings.com/reviews/restroom347.htm
I know, I know, just copy and paste it. The Mac won't show me the button for adding a link...

Here's a picture of our nephew Zach, he was up for a visit last weekend.
He really seems to enjoy standing in the back yard looking at things, as long as he can keep a deathgrip on somebody's hand. He's not a huge fan of the solo standing at this point, although he seems to be able to manage it ok.

Clarifications:
OK, first of all that picture in the last post, the one with the Beaver in it? That's not a canoe under the plane, it's the firefighting tank. My bad. A canoe would be somewhat longer and more symmetrical.
Any guesses as to how contained the fire is as of this morning? No, not 90%. No, not 95%... That's right, 92%! They're very precise this Minnesota fire management team. It seems like they've been removing fire crews at a rapid rate since the end of last week although the crew is still more than a couple hundred. I think they're pretty comfortable with the situation overall.
Betsy is still very confused about the canoes and how they're used to fight the fire. The picture of the boat jetting water from last week didn't clarify anything apparently. Here's what I know:
Some crews were flown in but most paddled, even the ones that flew used canoes to get around once they were in the wilderness.
Everyone gets a canoe orientation.
They did have hoses and portable pumps which sucked lake water for fighting fires.
I'm pretty sure they did not have any sort of canoe mounted water cannon, as cool as that would be. I think the picture of the boat with the water jet was probably on Seagull lake which is accessible by road.
The canoes were just for transportation.
Mostly I think they used shovels and pick-axes to break up and spread out the fuel although they seemed pretty excited about those fire-line explosives, I think there were special crews for that.

I don't know what I'm going to write about after this fire is out.
Today the moved the containment percentage up to 85. It seems like with the rain they've been getting there isn't any real spreading of the fire, just smoldering. They're actually pulling out many of the firefighters and their equipment, tomorrow they're transferring control of the fire from the Pacific Northwest National Incident Management Team 2 back to the Minnesota Team A Incident Management Team. The Pacific Northwest guys are some wildfire ringers they brought in when things were looking bad.
The obnoxious heat has gone away for the moment, the high today was around 85. Last night with the outside temperature in the lower 60s and operation heat suck going we got positively cold. It was a nice change.

Fire update:
Yesterday they moved the containment meter up to 55% and as of 6pm today they made it 65%. They're still saying it's stationary with the occasional flare up. Apparently they're having a hard time with it smoldering in the duff (layer of dry pine needles and whatnot).
They had thunderstorms in the area but didn't get much precipitation today.
There are a bunch of maps online but they're all PDFs and I don't seem to be able to link to those. I found one that shows all of the hotspots that they've found with the infrared detectors. Based on the IR map I'd say that the fire has burned right up to the shore of Little Saganaga all along the northeast side of the lake. I'm pretty sure the "famous" Little Sag campsite with the cliff behind it is right in the middle of that part of the lake. Hard to say how affected the site itself might be but I'm pretty sure there's been fire in the area.
Gabimichigami (NW of Little Sag) looks like it's had about 80% of it's shoreline burned. Ogishkemuncie (NW of Gabi) is only about 20% affected at the northeast end of the lake.

Here's a non-sunset photo of a Beaver taking off. It just looks like sunset because of all the smoke in the air.
The Beavers are US Forest Service planes, they own 3 of them and use them throughout the Superior National Forest, mainly doing forest fire patrols. It was one of these planes that discovered the Cavity Lake fire on July 14th.
They're really cool old airplanes dating back to the 1950s. I've never gotten to ride in one but did get climb around on one at Sawbill once. They were loading up equipment and canoes to go help out some campers that were stranded or injured or something and I helped tie a canoe on top of a pontoon, the pilot let me sit in the cockpit for a minute. It was boss. You can see there's a canoe tied to the plane in this photo, gives you some idea of how big the planes are. The canoe is probably at least 16' long.

Too hot:
According to the Discovery Channel weather station in our bathroom it's 101.3 outside.
I went to pick up some lumber for the kitchen cabinets and on the way back drove past a work crew laying asphalt. Between the sun beating down heating up the existing asphalt and the truckloads of hot new asphalt coming in I can't think of a worse job.
So due to the heat I've been doing pinball repair in the basement and surfing the internet in front of the fan rather than working on the cabinets. And eating the occasional popsicle.
I've been kind of negligent on the fire updates and I just found the motherload of fire pictures so here's the latest.
They've been reporting for a couple of days now that the fire is 45% contained. The controlled area is apparently along the east side, along the Gunflint trail where all the businesses and residences are. They've been using "fire line explosives" along the southwest side of the fire, that's the area between Little Saganaga and Kekekabic. According to the Forest Service the explosives "create a clean natural looking firebreak." Now the plan is to use that same technique to the north of Kekekabic. There are 515 people working on the fire right now. The USFS says the fire has been basically stationary since mid-week thanks to the cooperative weather (rain and calm winds) and the efforts of the fire fighters. The crews are using hand held heat detectors to find and snuff out hot spots, seems like it could take them a long time to cover the nearly 32,000 acres that have been affected so far.
Here's a picture from the early days when the fire was burning hot and fast:

This island looks pretty devastated but if you look at the large version of the picture you can see there are still a few patches of green here and there.

Here's a humans eye view of the aftermath.

Here are some comments I got after I posted the picture of the firefighters heading out in the canoes:
Eejaydee said...
What good are firefighters able to do from canoes? Do they have canoes with a water canon on it, like the fire fighter boats?
Carrie & Rob said...
Do they splash it with their paddles?
-r
While these aren't canoes I think the picture answers the question.

The Minnesota National Guard has at least two Blackhawk helicopters helping with the fire.

This isn't an especially interesting photo but the guy is the operations chief for the fire. His name is Steve Decker.

Here's a picture showing a portage out of Seagull Lake where the fire was really intense.

As bad as that looks there is hope, here's a cone from a Jack Pine with seeds dispersed. Jack Pine cones only release their seeds after a fire, the heat is what makes the cone open up.

This one is even more remarkable to me, you might need to look at the big version to see the sprouts coming up.
MPR did a nice story with a naturalist the other day, they were walking around one of these burned areas. The naturalist talked about a plant that comes up right after a fire, the following summer it flowers and drops seeds, the seeds then stay in the soil until there's another fire. Apparently they've documented cases of the seeds being dormant for 200 years.
The naturalist did a good job of making the point that fire is part of the ecology just like rain and wind. She was sympathetic toward people who are upset about the dramatic change to places they love but she said if it wasn't for fires those places never would have gotten to be the way we remember them in the first place. People tend to think of places like this as static but they're really not, it's just that the changes are normally too slow for us to comprehend them.
Later in the interview they came across an eagles nest in the burned area, they could hear at least one juvenile eagle calling to it's parents who were also in the area.

The USFS posted this one to show that there are patches of forest that don't get destroyed by the fire. I think it's more interesting to look in the burned areas where you can see that all the logs are laying down in the same direction. That's because they were all blown down by the straight line wind in 1999.

And lastly an amusing picture for any former Sawbill employees, the fire crews had to get canoe safety training before heading out, I prefer to think of it as a canoe orientation. (Everybody who rents a canoe from Sawbill gets a canoe orientation no excuses.)

Lastly I apologize to anyone with a slow internet connection, but I couldn't resist putting in all these photos.