BWCA Part I

We drove up to Lutsen late last friday evening. Stopped for the evening at a little roadside motel. The girls got us up bright and early. Once we stepped outside, there were mosquitos and biting flies everywhere. Yikes. Not off to a good start. But the sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. We picked up the key to the cabin after breakfast and headed up the Gunflint Trail (about a little over 2 hours more to drive).
The cabin is at the end of the Gunflint Trail. Part way up, we noticed dark clouds of smoke. Hmmm. A forest fire appeared to be raging. But, the cabin rental office hadn't mentioned it and we hadn't read anything in the paper about it. Must be ok.
We've got a canoe at the cabin and decide to take the girls out for a paddle and swim. Norah had a rough time in the canoe. Actually, it was hot (around 90) and she hated being in the life vest and hated that she couldn't move about freely in the canoe. It was a very short ride. Instead, Lolo and I jumped into Lake Saganaga for a swim. Brrr. I've about decided that if it's a lake in Minnesota, I'm going to need to wear a wetsuit. Lolo loved it and just swam her heart out. Jim had to take over once I got uncomfortably cold. Since we haven't had a video in a while, here's one of Lolo "schwimmin". The videos from this trip are a bit blurry in the conversion but you get the general gist. Hooray for our mermaid!

In any event, the wildfire turned out to be a big deal (Jim took the fire photo about 5pm one evening....eerie don't you think?) So far, more than 30000 acres have burned. (This is a link to a really nice blog in the area to read more about it). And unfortunately, it was quite close to where we were staying.....however, we found it very interesting. The folks at the cabin next door had their sprinklers going on their roof. I have to say, I've never been anywhere before when people have felt the need to water their roofs before. The first night it was hot and we didn't think anything about the fire. During Norah's 2am wakeup call, I got up to find thick smoke. I woke Jim up and we ended up closing up the windows every night. (The cabin, obviously, didn't have airconditioning and in 90 degree weather, we had the windows wide open).
More to come....