On the Road with Maya: A Return to Grand Marais

A calm day on Lake Superior
Maybe not the best day for a sail

August is here and we’ve gone as far north as we can this trip and still get back to Texas in time for fall semester classes. As much as we don’t want to think about it, it is time to start working our way back south. The past three years we’ve not headed for home until November or October at the earliest, so we are struggling a little bit right now. Going back to Texas in August? Leaving wonderfully cool weather for 100 degrees in the shade? How crazy are we? Crazy enough to put our heads in the sand for another week or so anyway…

Splash! Oh what a difference a day can make...
Lake Superior 'pretending' to be an ocean

After leaving Grand Portage, we traveled back down Minnesota’s North Shore Scenic Drive, Highway 61. We made it all of forty miles south to Grand Marais and decided we just couldn’t go on. We had had so much fun here; a few more blissfully spent days would be OK, wouldn’t they? Oh yeah, we talked ourselves right into that one.

Bearskin Lake in the Boundary Water Canoe Area Wilderness
We should have picked this day to go paddling

The day we picked to go paddling was a bit on the rough side, so we chickened out

And so we spent four more days in Grand Marais. We hiked in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness again, saw waterfalls at nearby Judge Magney State Park, ate some good fish and planned to go canoeing but the weather turned windy and we opted for another hike instead. Since we are out of practice paddling, neither one of us thought our arms were up to battling the wind.

Waiting for lunch at Dockside Fish Market

Yum!

Although nothing to really complain about, the weather was not as perfect as our first stay in Grand Marais. We had one ‘just right’ day, two windy ones and one that actually got to 80 degrees! I know many of you are laughing at that, but the humidity was high and we were on a long hike with a lot of hill climbing. We were sweating profusely and getting a little taste of what it is going to be like in another few weeks as we head farther south. But back in our campground on Lake Superior, we were in fleece jackets before the sun went down. The forecast for the next day was 70 and sunny. Could I just say our motivation for moving on is definitely lacking...