September 10th Monday
We slept in our car last night and did not get to Grand Portage until 9:30pm on the account of leaving Mall of America late in the afternoon. We had the plan of sleeping at the Grand Portage Marina campgrounds for $15 and setting up a tent. However, when we got there, the people at the Grand Portage Lodge (an establishment that owns the marina campgrounds and the casino along with the Grand Portage Trading Post/Spur Gas Station) did not know where to direct us. They were only aware of there being an RV lot. I asked them how much their rates were for the lodge. They told me $95 for a street view and $105 for a lake view. This was better the $140 (supposedly really $160, but they were going to give us a measly $20 off) that Best Western was asking for in Grand Marais. I told them we’d take the $95 street view room. They told me they only had lake view rooms left, but that all of them were smoking. I said, thank you, but that we’d pass. $100 was my limit and I definitely wasn’t going to go over it for a room that possibly could smell like cigarette butts. Shelly is also very particular on such matters, because her allergies flare up around animals and smoke saturated rooms. After we rejected the idea there, another employee came around and told me that the campgrounds were part of the RV park and that the marina offices were closed so we would have to pay in the morning, but would still be allowed to camp there if we wanted to.
We drove to the RV park and saw nothing but a dirt and gravel lot where other RVs were stationed. There did not appear to be an area that resembled a campground with tent pads. It was going on 10:15pm. It was dark as could be. It did not look like an ideal place to setup a tent. Shelly and I decided to check out a place called Rydens that we had heard about on the forums. It turned out to be about 5 or 6 miles north of the gas station and about a half mile from the Canadian border. It was closed, at least the check-in office to the motel. There were other people staying in a couple of the rooms, but there was not anyone present to take a reservation. We turned around and decided to sleep in our car at the Grand Portage Lodge/Casino.
It turned out to be a miserable sleep. We went to bed at around 11:15pm and at around 4am I could no long sleep. I kept trying to, but it was so cold out that night (48 degrees) that I would wake up every 15 minutes until I gave up trying to sleep anymore at 4:45am. Shelly was on the same boat and gave up trying to sleep at 5:15am. We decided to start the car up after brushing out teeth. We drove around until just before 6am. Shelly got a little nap for about a half hour in the warmth of the car as I drove aimlessly.
We ended up stopping at the Grand Portage Trading Post/Spur Gas Station so we could change our clothes, get water, and pick up some gloves since I left mine at home thinking it wouldn’t be that cold out. Gloves are important when handling hot mugs and pumping water when it is windy or chilly out. I did not want my hands to get cold while pumping water. We got one pair of gloves and two pairs of mittens for shelly since the mittens were thin and since there was only one pair of gloves left.
We left the trading post at around 6:40am and got to where the Voyager departs at around 6:45am. They ask that you check in by 6:45am, so we made it just in time. I notified Captain Mike that we were here, asked where Captain Don was so I could make a canoe reservation for the end of our trip, and raced back to the car to double check that we had everything as well as to cook our freeze dried breakfasts.
As we were waiting for our water to boil, Captain Don had arrived and approached us to find out the details on when we wanted the canoe, I offered to pay him once we spoke of the arrangements, but he said that I could just pay when I got back. He also told us that we were the only ones there were waiting on so that we should hurry up. He was very pleasant and nice. It was 7:10am when we talked. The warning horn on the Voyageur tooted at 7:20am. We were on the boat by 7:25am. They were not scheduled to leave until 7:30am, but I still felt bad about being the last ones to get on board, because if we had gotten on sooner, we could have left earlier. Note to self and to others, arrive early and you may just be lucky enough to leave early if there is no one that is being waited on.
Our ride on the Voyageur was an interesting one, both in good ways and bad ways. It started off not so well. The food we cooked for breakfast to eat on the boat did not taste good at all. One was a potato and egg dish. It was suppose to taste like hashbrowns and eggs, but it did not taste anything of the sort. I forget what the second one was suppose to be, but shelly disliked it even more that the first one. I didn’t care for either of them. Not only was the food not that great, but the ship was kind of rocky. Shelly got seasick in short time even though the waves were not that horrible. It was just that such a small boat could not take them as well as a bigger ship could. I too, surprisingly ended up getting a little seasick. It hit me about a half hour into the ride. I went to the back deck to get some fresh air, and before you know it, I vomited a mouthful of water loaded with breakfast chunks I had eaten moments ago. After I let that out, Shelly came to join me in the back when sleeping on the trip no longer was working for her. While she did not puke, she did not look like she was having too great of a time. I hung out in the back for another 15 minutes before I decided to go lay down. I would fall into a deep sleep for the next two hours until shell woke me up to tell me we were at Windigo at around 10am.
When we got there, I saw Ranger Luke. He waved at me and it seemed as though he remembered me from earlier in May when I went on my solo trip. Everyone got off the boat for a talk-in from Ranger Luck and those of us who were destined to get back on the boat headed to the Ranger Station to check-in while the others that were staying at Windigo went to go get their packs from the Voyageur. By the time we checked in and signed the visitor book, the Voyageur sounded its horn and it was time to get back on the ship. Unfortunately, we never saw Ranger Cindy. She supposedly left on Sunday, at least that’s what Ranger Luke informed us. Although, I did not think the Ranger III left on Sundays. In either case, we missed her.
So you might be asking, what were the good parts of the trip to the island since I said the trip there was “interesting in both good and bad ways”. For starters, with the exception of maybe four other people, a group of about 20 kids got off the boat at Windigo. They appeared to be students from some school on a field trip. The four other people that got off were probably their chaperones. They weren’t bad kids at all. Maybe a little noisy and excited; I was only happy to have them off because it cleared a lot of space on the boat. There was now old seven other people on with us. Two single men, a couple, and a group of three guys. After observing who was left on the boat, Shelly and I got a Snickers bar from the first mate (Shelly thought he was really funny, for what reasons, I forget) while we were passing Grace Island. I remember this because I wanted to know where Grace Island was so we knew how to get to it by canoe, something we planned to do at the end of our trip. Things got pretty exciting after that. Shelly said she thought that one of the single guys was a friend of ours that we had met on a previous trip that we took a couple of years back. If I made mention of his name here, I do not think he would approve of it. He prefers to be an anonymous being that frequents the island a couple of times a year to enjoy the peace and solitude that the surroundings provide him. Many of you know of him and some of you have even had the fortunate pleasure of meeting him just as we have. He is a very kind, warm, and gentle soul. In any case, so things do not become confusing with my story telling, we’ll refer to our anonymous character as George. When I asked Shelly whom she thought we knew, she told me she thought one of the people on the boat was George. I asked which person and she quickly assured me that she thought she had made a mistake. I still was curious to know which person on the boat looked similar enough to be confused with George and asked her to point him out to me. When I saw the person, even I questioned if it was George. The gentleman looked very similar to George, but something seemed different about him that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Perhaps, he was dressed differently that my memory was set on remembering or maybe my photographic memory of him had faded over the years from not seeing him. In either case, just to be certain, I asked the George look-a-like if he was George and sure enough it was him. WOW!!!
My sad excuse for a Snicker Bar...I guess they forgot to rotate their inventory and I got one from last year...Shelly's looked much better:
George remembered me and this led to a conversation about a great deal things. Being that I am uncertain of what I have written about in past trip reports and whether or not George was mentioned in any of those trip reports, I will refrain from sharing our discussions so that I do not expose his identity. I will say that we did find out that George was staying at Malone Bay for a period of time that would allow us to intersect with each other later on in our trip. Besides having this to look forward to in the middle of our hiking itinerary, George offered to take any food, fuel, and unneeded items that we had so that our packs would be that much lighter until we got to Malone Bay. If you know anything about backpacking, you’ll realize how appreciative we were of George’s willingness to extend such a favor to us. Using him as a resupply point allowed us to only have to carry our first four days of food instead of all twelve days of food. It allowed us to get rid of some of the fuel we were not going to need. It allowed us to avoid having to carry the dry bags that we were going to be using on the last four days of our trip canoeing. Essentially it allowed us to part with almost half of the weight that was in our bags. Therefore, instead of carrying 30Lb backpacks, we were down to just under 20Lbs each. Talk about what a relief. If you’re reading this George, thank you once again for your kindness.
Continuing on with our sea travels, we got to McCargoe Cove at 12:50pm to drop off the group of three guys. I got to talk to one of them. His last name was Reese. He was from St. Louis. We had a brief discussion about our career paths and what had brought him to the island for the first time. We got to Rock Harbor at 2:30pm and did not do a Belle Isle stop for anyone. On the note of Belle Isle, Ranger Carl who had always been posted on the North side of the island had retired last year according to what George had told us. We met Carl in 2011 at Lane Cove, which must have been his last year.
After we got off the boat, I was approached by a man named Mark (aka Inca Roads on the forums). He asked if my name was Tim and I told him it was. He said, “Its me Mark.” I looking puzzled, he continued, “Mark from the Isle Royale Forums.” I replied, “I know a lot of Mark’s on the forums, which one are you?” He told me he was the one who told me he was going to be arriving to the island the same day as him and how he did the Scoville Point hike just as planned before coming to meet me. Then, it hit me that Mark was Inca Roads. I was not expecting to still see him around at this time. I thought while he was going to try to cross paths with me, things would not work out because he would not want to wait until I quite possibly did not arrive until 3pm, while the Isle Queen IV would have dropped him off around 11:30am. Well, as it turned out, my assumptions were incorrect and I was embarrassed beyond belief for being so clueless as to whom he was. Sorry Inca I hope I am forgiven
Mark told me that another person named Ulmer on the forums (aka John) was not going to be at Three Mile tonight due to his wife’s sister passing unexpectedly. He got off just before the boat departed. I was going to introduce myself as I passed through Three Mile this afternoon on my way to Daisy, but obviously that was not going to happen now. I paused our conversation and double-checked that Captain Mike was aware of our canoe reservation and he reconfirmed that everything was good to go. Before turning back to Mark, I apologized again to Captain Mike for keeping him waiting for us at the dock at 7:25am today. He seemed unbothered by it, which made me feel less guilty.
I turned back to Mark. We talked a little bit about our itineraries and previous trips, before wishing each other a fun and safe trip. From there, Shelly and I headed to the Ranger Station underpass and unloaded what we did not need into a dry bag that we were going to use for our canoe trip and passed it along to George before departing on our way at 4:15pm. In the process of packing the dry bag, we met a pesky squirrel that was fearless and used to the presence of people. He tried taking our food and scaling the Ranger Station wall and bench to see what he could get. I had to chase him away several times. One time he even went through Shelly’s legs.
We got to Three Mile at 5:45pm via the Tobin Trail. With the sun starting to set at 7:00pm and being almost completely down at 7:30pm from what we learned from our drive to Grand Portage last night, we decided not to risk going to Daisy Farm. Plus we heard it was packed over at Daisy Farm from campers that were presently at Three Mile. On top of that, at our pace, we would not arrive to Daisy Farm until 7:45pm should we have decided to attempt it.
We initially grabbed shelter #12 because it was the first and only one we saw open, but moved onto shelter #5 instead because it was closer to the water. Shelter #4 was taken. We were not sure about Shelters 1, 2, 3, but did notice half of the tent sites having people occupying them, which was odd due to shelters being available. There was also a very large group of people that we took notice of at this time, probably about eight of them on the dock. They would eventually clear out and head back to the group sites. Not picking shelter #12 was a good idea, because the group sites are located a short distance behind this particular shelter and we wouldn’t care to hear the noise of traffic that might have been made throughout the night with people using the pit toilet. After we had our shelter set up, dinner finished, and teeth brushed; we headed off to bed around 9:45pm. We set our alarm for 5:15am, but somehow ended up waking up at 5:50am due to not hearing the alarm.
343.1 Miles Hiked: 2004 (3 Days), 2010 (11 Days), 2011 (13 Days), 2012 X 2 (8 + 12 Days), 2013 (9 Days/Paddling), 2019 (30 Days/Paddling)
Did you guys expect anything less? 
We're talking about Rafiki here where each day of my previous reports has been the size of a typical persons whole report 
You didn't think because I haven't been around these parts for almost a year my extensive ways of going about writing my reports had changed did you? 
