What do you know.. A Friday!

I had to think real hard while laying in bed this morning on what day of the week it is? Yeah, its Friday! Unfortunately,  it's going to rain Saturday and Sunday with cooler temps in the low 70's! There goes my lake plans.

I got my bumper sticker in the mail. Love it!!! I just stuck it on the frig. No need to piss off any customers or crazy dumpers! 

We got kind of a answer on the kids going back to school in the fall. It's up to each district. Now we wait for that answer and it could change just like that if Covid numbers go up. Right now we are at 16 to 17% transition rate in our community. It's based on that number, in-person, distance or a combo. I'm still okay with Logan doing 100% on line, all year! Of course I just read that Covid is here to stay for our entire lives! Nooooooooooooo! I can't even go there! 

A little gross toe update. I know my feet are a little dirty, nails are a mess from bug spay, and all my poison ivy bumps. 

I used the athletes foot spray and that seems to help the itching. I also scratched the top of my toe, taking off some layers of skin. So it looks extra bad on my one toe. It doesn't itch as much but they are still swollen and it's spread to the Botton and sides of my foot too. I read that it can take a few weeks to go away. Ugh!!! 

Moving right into food, after seeing nasty toes and feet! lol.. The diiner we had the other night. I made honey, garlic salad dressing and topped it with walnuts, blue cheese, and tomatoes. So good. Steve made grilled chicken and topped it with his jalapeño/sweet pea pesto. YUM! 

The North Shore drama ..

Our drama started again when the kids tried to call us Thursday morning. The cell service was almost non-existent at our Crescent Lake Camping Spot! We got one bar and once in awhile some texts or news would all of a sudden come through. Celina tried calling but I couldn't hear anything. We had to drive 20 minutes up the Sawbill trail to a outfitter who was suppose to have good cell service. I had to hug the outside, corner of the building to talk to Celina.

Don wasn't feeling well, needed a Covid test and had to wait till Friday to get one. The kids also were exposed to him and tried to get tested too, but because they didn't have symptoms and weren't around anyone that tested positive could not get a test. Ugh!! So, they ended up leaving Don, and the three of them came up to social distance camp with us. We separated out different chairs, they had their own tent and we didn't share food utensils etc.. Kept our distance from each other just incase.

Thankfully, no one felt sick and it was all good for us. Don didn't get his test results back in 24 hours like promised. When he called Saturday, it was closed! We thought we were going to have to camp in our back yard till Monday morning when the results would come back. Thankfully, he got a text Sunday morning and it was negative! 

Logan hanging out in Grand Marais. We could only send in one person to shop for food. So we all waited outside. 

Just to remind us, that we are in the woods. These signs were posted at the camp sites. We did see what looked like a baby bears poop on the camping site road when we went for our morning bike ride. It was gone when we rode back. I think the camp ground guy cleans up all the evidence asap when he makes his rounds. Because a chipmunk was also dead on the road. Thats close!!!

While the kids hiked up Eagle Mountain, Steve and I found this cool place to kayak. We went right under the road in these huge tunnels to the other side. 

It was very shallow, not a good fishing spot but a nice kayak place. 

Time for a few drinks too! 

We had some really good fried Walleye fish at this place. We found a table down by the water, away from the crowds. 

It was pretty foggy by the water. 

It was a warm 80*F day for Grand Marais, the cold water felt great! This was before getting poison ivy on my toes!

All the fog lifting! 

We did a little raspberry picking too as those were also ripe. 

We usually only pick raspberries so it was different to not pick many of these, just blueberries mostly! 

The view of the lake from our tent! Perfect set up! 

Now the kids want to try camping up north on their own. They want to do a dry run before with setting up the tents, cooking on the propane stoves etc. We usually do all for them and its time they did it on their own! I said to just try all in our back yard, but they might go to Sauk Lake for a weekend before? 

The vacation post continues!

Our new remote state forest camp site near Rice Lake. We did pretty good for setting this up mostly in the dark. Unfortunately, it rained all night long and a lot Tuesday. It was pretty muddy in that spot. We probably could have set the tents up back farther on flowers, but I didn't want to crush the field of flowers. 

It was a nice location to camp, nicer when it does rain! It was buggy with lots of mosquitoes after the rain. Made it kind of not so fun even sitting in the screened in tent because we were always killing more and more mosquitoes. They'd swarm you and would follow us back into the porch. 

 Here's that not so fun note we were left on our picnic table Monday. We found this at 8:30pm!!!!

You would think they could have said it nicer! 

We did look on the website and sure enough, campsite closed! You would think they'd put up a bigger sign in the camp area! Tuesday, we did happen upon this other camping area I wanted to check out. It's always a good idea to see what else there is for camping! It was a beautiful site and only a few along the lake. Campsites were really far apart and nothing across from them. Very private! 

Tuesday night I tried to see if we could book a camping spot and it was all full. There were some first come, first serve. Wednesday morning we drove over and talked to the Camp guy and he said #7 was open. I'm like we'll take it! It was the one we wanted and could not be reserved on line!! So most of Wednesday we spent packing up and moving for the 3rd time! 

We just hung out the rest of the day at Crescent Lake, our camp spot. We kayaked, I floated in the tube and Steve fished. The best part, hardly any mosquitoes and a beautiful view of the lake. 

This was our first camp site on Lake Clara. We always camp here. It was sad to have to leave but I think the new location was an upgrade. The bummer part, was we had to drive an extra 20 minutes to get to this location. It was a long drive back to town on hwy 61. The other camp spot was a quick 20 minutes and closer to Lutsen /Grand Marais. With the move to Crescent lake, we were next to BWCA, way up there in the woods! Nothing much for cell service either! 

I'm hoping next summer we can camp here again if Covid is done or they decide to open this site up. 

Since we didn't want to go out to eat in town, due to Covid. We made some really good camp or picnic meals. First night was Beef Tenderloin at Lake Clara camp site. 

We had our friendly chipmunks visit, looking for food!

We did a lot of biking, this is the driving trail to our Rice Lake camp spot! We really are alone in the wood here! 

We did a lot of biking on old logging roads. Some are pretty rough and hardly traveled. I'm always worried we are going to bike into a bear some where in the woods. 

I think we make too much noise for that to happen but who knows?? 

Made some pesto, ranch ham and salami sandwiches on a picnic next to an area we kayaked. 

I can't call this a lake. It was more like a bog, stream, Lilly pad area with lots of beaver dams, that went on forever! We never did make it to the end. Steve was too busy fishing and catching lots of small mouth bass and a northern. 

I was just along for the ride. My fishing pole of course didn't have a lure on it, so I couldn't fish! 

I wanted to go back here to fish but we never made it back. 

Thankfully it was an over cast day and the fish were biting. 

Beautiful area, the kind were you could see a moose! 

Our new Crescent lake camp site. 

Here was that note on the outhouse building far from where we were camping on Lake Clara. We also never use this, as I bring a port a potty for our campsite. 

Breakfast with wild blue berries we picked the day before. We also purchased maple syrup from the place in the woods that taps maple trees on their property and makes the syrup right there. 

They are small berries but very tasty! Made excellent pancakes! 

This is the first time we've been able to pick blue berries and we did it three times! Usually we are only picking wild raspberries, which we did too! 

Lake Superior, another beach view. 

Wearing our masks in Grand Marais and around town! MN State mandate to wear a mask went into effect Saturday! Everyone up north was already wearing them (or mostly I should say!) We did come across a few people not doing this before!

I was able to stack 10 rocks, before some fell off. 

 We thought a logging road would be a short cut back to our Crescent lake camp spot. It was super rough and not a great road. This was our turn around and go back spot. The road pretty much was gone and Steve was walking to a huge low spot filled with water. Un-passable in the car!

We drove down this road for 40 minutes before realizing we'd have to turn around and go back. It was fun but kind of scary drive. If. we got stuck, no one would find us or know where we were! 

He likes to do stuff like this all the time up there. We go down lot of logging roads. Most of the time, they get so bad, we have to turn around. It would be fun to have a 4 wheeler, then we could go through anything except trees that fell down over the road!