Roughing it in Ely, Minnesota

After a week with a 50-amp full-hook-up camp site right on the lake at Voyageurs National Park, it's time to wander on down the road. This is a bit of a challenging relocation. We know we want to stay somewhere around the little town of Ely, Minnesota. But when we called multiple parks to get a reservation, everyone chuckled and told us, "You know that the Blueberry Festival is this week, right?" Why no, we didn't know, but it seems that about 40,000 other people did. So all the campgrounds are full, and have been booked up for months. Our only chance at getting a place was in the few first-come-first-served spots in the national forest campgrounds. When Denisa called the day before, all of them were filled with campers intending to stay for the festival--except one. Thanks to the camp host for saving us that spot as we approached Ely so we knew we had a camp site!

We are happy, tucked away at South Kawishiwi River National Forest Campground! The beauty of the first-come-first-served camp sites, is that once you are in a site, you can stay up to 14 days. So even though we didn't make reservations months in advance, we can now stay under these tall, tall pines until the Blueberry Festival. Yay!

We just hope those pines all stay upright while we are camping here. Last month, a storm packing 80 mph winds blew over trees throughout the campground. This huge pine would have surely killed anyone in site #7 when it fell. Thankfully, it was vacant that night. They have cut away most of the trunk, but the big root ball is still standing up on its side where the wind up-rooted that giant tree and laid it across that camp site.

Like most Forest Service campgrounds, we don't have the luxury of full hook-ups. We have weak 30-amp electrical service, that will only run one thing at a time--and we found it won't even run our microwave at all. So we're having to make some adjustments in our electrical usage while we stay here. We also don't have any water connection, so we are limited to what we brought with us in our tank. Likewise, without sewer connections, we are limited to the capacity of our black and gray tanks. We have learned that we can stretch both of those with some creative water usage.

For example, we use our water jugs to get additional water from the one spigot in the campground. The big one is set beside the kitchen sink. We also catch the water we use here, and will empty it outside to save the capacity of our holding tanks.

In the bathroom, we have another water jug, and another water-catcher. This water we can use to flush the toilet so that uses less water out of our tanks.

Since we are parked close to one of the vault toilets, we will use it most of the time. Sometimes that might not be a pleasant trip, but this is the best vault toilet we have ever seen. The walk there is through a raspberry thicket.

The camp hosts do an immaculate job of keeping these toilets clean! We have never seen a vault toilet this nice, complete with wall hangings and "welcome to Ely" literature on the table. There is air freshener and hand sanitizer, and this place is cleaner than many of the public restrooms we have been in. Good job!

But remember, we are roughing it. So even when we have nice toilets, we are still living in the middle of a forest. Mark shouldn't have been surprised when this huge spider had taken up residence on that cute little table in the men's restroom.

Now that we are settled into our new way of life for now, it's time to explore the area. We arrived on a Tuesday, and Mark found that they celebrate "Tuesday Night Live" in the town of Ely. Armed with a full schedule of events, we headed into town. We took in the historical downtown walking tour, which pointed out many of the buildings that have been a part of this town since it began in the late 1800's. With pictures and stories of the early citizens, our guide entertained us through the hilly streets of Ely.

On Tuesday afternoons the Pioneer Mine museum is open and free, so we headed to the edge of town to learn more.

We found that this area had an underground vein of high quality iron ore that they started mining in 1888.

The museum included pictures and stories about the miners who  worked underground every day. Immigrants from all over the world came here because of the jobs. Management learned to split the men into working groups that included different nationalities. When an Italian, a Finn, and a Russian work together, they don't gossip or complain to each other because they speak different languages. This mine would close in 1967, and was a shocking loss to the 450 miners who made their living here. Some of the old timers that had first-hand knowledge of the mine were telling stories of life in a mining town during our tour.

Each morning, the miners were lowered down a shaft elevator to spend their day working underground. This was going on in several other shaft mines in the surrounding area. When all the mines closed in the 1960's, the water was no longer pumped out of these deep shafts. Slowly, but surely, the remaining rock gave way, and the whole area became a giant sink hole. That giant sink hole is now called Miner's Lake, a pretty addition to the town of Ely.

Another stop of the "Tuesday Night Live" schedule was to the Ely Folk School. Here they teach folk classes in an attempt to keep old skills alive. One of the classes involves building a birchbark canoe just the way Native Americans did. We saw the work-in-progress canoe, but we didn't go back for the class that night.

That's because the weekly farmers' market was starting by then, and Denisa had shopping to do. We bought cherry/nut bread, maple popcorn balls, pecan pie bar, cucumbers, and oatmeal cookies. Denisa is also excited to see that with this cool weather in the north, garden peas are still available! After she took the picture, Denisa made another round to the stalls and bought green beans and squash. We love home-made baked goods and fresh produce!

While we nibbled on our baked goods, we listened to the community band concert in the park. We are settling into our new home town, and we think we're really going to like roughing it here!