What we found was more craft than blueberries at this Blueberry Craft Festival. The thousands of visitors are obviously here to shop at the hundreds of vendors that now filled the local park. We were shoulder-to-shoulder through the exhibits on Saturday. If the park wasn't enough, we could also visit the town's hockey stadium for more vendors. Interesting that we didn't see a gym, but we did find an indoor hockey stadium. We must be up north!?!
We ate at the food vendor section of the festival, and listened to a little music. But the only hint of berries we found was the $9 blueberry pancake breakfast served each morning.
We don't have space in the motor home for crafts, so it didn't take us long to walk through the vendor tents. That means we had time to visit the Dorothy Molter museum in Ely that day. We found that Dorothy was a spinster, who lived her entire adult life in the Boundary Waters. That included the winters, when she lived by herself in temperatures that got down to -50 degrees. She inherited a 4-cabin resort in a remote area, that would become part of the national wilderness area in 1978. She refused to sell her property, and was allowed to stay until she died in 1986. Since then, the cabin where she lived was brought into Ely to be made into this museum.
She hunted or grew most everything she needed, because a trip to the nearest road was a 15-mile paddle each way. Then it took another 15-mile drive down that road to get to the nearest town. When she died of a heart attack carrying wood in December at the age of 79, her cabin was left exactly as she left it. The kitchen is still outfitted just the way it was the day she died.
One of the main things she cooked here was root beer--thousands of bottles each year. Her recipe included lake water, sugar, yeast, and root beer flavoring. She sold her concoction to canoers in the boundary waters. Her picture, and her main motto, "kwitchurbeliakin" is still hanging in her cabin.
She decorated her cabin and yard with the broken oars from her canoeing customers.
They're still selling her root beer at the museum gift shop--minus the twigs and sand that were often found in her bottles. We enjoyed a root beer in the shade of the trees outside the relocated cabin of the woman that came to be known as "The Root Beer Lady."
We had one more day in the area, so we made our third Boundary Water kayak trip after church on Sunday. We put our boat into the Kawishiwi River a few steps from our camp site on a sunny afternoon with no wind. The river looked like a mirror.
We had been warned by our camp host that the Kawishiwi River will narrow in a mile or two. That would bring us to shallow water littered with rocks, that we would have to portage around. Mark got out to check out the situation, but it looks like there is no way we're paddling a kayak through this.
Mark is getting to be an experienced portager. He first re-arranges the seats a little while Denisa carries the oars and the backpack with our paddling gear.
Then he hoists it over his head and takes off. He's amazing!
While we haven't noticed any mosquitoes or flies while we are on the water kayaking, we can't say the same about these portages. After recent rain showers, the mosquitoes are thick and hungry where we are forced to walk through the woods. At the end of each portage, we're throwing things back in the boat and trying to outrun those hungry blood-sucking insects. It's good to get back on the water, even if it's short-lived and we have to portage again when we see the rocks and the ripples up ahead again.
This one is worse with big water puddles and even more mosquitoes. This portage stuff isn't fun today!
After running from the mosquitoes, we're back on the calm water with great views down the Kawishiwi River.
Because we're stealthy kayakers, we usually get to see wildlife. Today our only sighting was this doe coming down to the water for a drink on this warm afternoon.
Can you believe it?!? There's another set of rocks that we can't get through. We're going to have to lug our stuff through the woods again?!? Even worse than the muddy mosquito trail, this one also has fallen trees. It takes some pretty fancy footwork to get yourself and a boat over a log like that.
Could it get worse? How about a log with multiple branches over the trail?
After being chased by mosquitoes, we hurry back to the water for a short paddle. The water is beautiful, but we're not sure it is worth the portages. We are by now in a pretty remote section of the river. After all, who else would do these portages? We are certainly surprised to see a bridge ahead.
Denisa disembarks to check out this very sturdy bridge. The railings are so tall that Denisa has to climb up a couple rungs just to wave over it. This seems to be the connector for a little-used trail in the wilderness.
The picture of Mark in the boat shows what a beautiful section of the river we have discovered. We haven't seen another boat for three portages and several miles, so we have the place to ourselves.
The only problem with this beautiful scenery is that not far ahead is yet another section of rocks and ripples that we can't get around. We just can't face another portage, so we turn our paddles back towards home. That's because we know that we still have the downed trees, the mud puddles, the mosquitoes and three portages to make it back to where we started.
As soon as we got through the final portage, we saw these kayakers in the rapids.
Wearing helmets and using the best kayaking equipment, even they weren't able to make it through the rapids. They were practicing their skills, shooting through the biggest current over and over. Sometimes they were sideways and upside down in their short kayaks.
Back to the calmest waters closer to home, we saw this group of friends playing a canoe game. It seems that points were awarded if one team could land the ball in the other team's boats. We had never witnessed canoe ball before, but this seemed to be the best wildlife we've found on the river today.
It doesn't feel like a very successful paddle trip, when more pictures are taken of the miserable portages, rather than the beautiful scenery. Even though we have immensely enjoyed the Boundary Waters, we seem to be ready to see what other wonders we can wander through. So we'll be heading down the road tomorrow.
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