The Minnesota north shore has eight state parks, each of which contains at least one waterfall. Tom and I are determined that we will visit all eight and we started with the closest one, Judge CR Magney State Park. The name is a bit of a mouthful. It was named after Clarence R Magney who …
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Mount Josephine, Minnesota
Last week on one of our days off, Tom and I hiked a trail that is close to home. We walked down the road, cut up past the beaver pond, and headed up the one mile trail to Mount Josephine. Mount Josephine is the highest mountain on the north shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota. …
Independence Day
Happy Independence Day! This year Tom and I will be celebrating the 4th of July with a picnic followed by fireworks at dark (about 10:30). The fireworks are being shot over the lake from the other side of the harbor, so we should be able to sit out on the dock and watch them …
Heritage Center at Grand Portage
About once a week either Tom or I will be assigned to work in the Heritage Center at Grand Portage. Grand Portage National Monument has six areas where we can work with five of them being places where we wear our living history clothing. The Heritage Center is the one place where we do not …
Gathering Spruce Root: The Longest Yard
You may think “The Longest Yard” is the title of a movie, but Tom and I spent a recent afternoon gathering spruce root, and gathering spruce root is really the longest yard. Read on and you will learn why! Yesterday I wrote about gathering birch bark. If you use birch bark in making a home, …
Gathering Birch Bark
Yesterday Tom and I went gathering birch bark. Birch bark was used by the Ojibwe for many of the products they used every day. They made homes and canoes out of birch bark. They made baskets, big and small, out of birch bark. Birch bark is an amazing material because the inside of the bark …
Thank You, Cleveland Cavaliers
I am not a basketball fan. I do not watch basketball and the only the things I can tell you about the recent NBA regular season are that the Golden State Warriors set a wins record, and the Cleveland Cavaliers ended up first in their league / division / whatever. But my parents watch basketball and …
Real Canadian Superstore
Grocery shopping continues to be a challenge as we move around from place to place. Here at Grand Portage, we have a Trading Post that is a pretty good little grocery store. Grand Marais has two grocery stores that are okay but typical of a small town. So we decided to head to the largest …
Back Home Safe and Sound
We are back home safe and sound from our 2,000-miles-in-a-week trip to Ohio. The three days in Ohio were great and we had a wonderful time while we were there. But we haven’t traveled that many miles that fast for a long time. In fact, we have never stayed out of the RV for more …
Mom’s 80th Birthday!
Tom and I made a speedy trip back to Ohio this week for a very special occasion: my mom’s 80th birthday. Dad turned 80 a couple of years ago and everyone in the family got together. That was all Mom wanted for her birthday too. So we all did our best – and we were only …