September 3 - Grand Portege, Minnesota

When we started the day's drive we weren't more than about 60 miles south of Duluth, and that last stretch of Wisconsin was entirely the northern woods and lakes type of ecology. The apparent population thinned out as the landscape became more completely forested. The impression of wilderness was dramatically increased when we spotted a large, black carcass on the side of the road that turned out to be a black bear!

In Duluth we crossed the mouth of the river right at the end of Lake Superior, giving us nice views of the river on one side and the lake on the other. As we did so, we also passed by the site of our city Volksmarch at the end of Wanderung 6 and recalled some of the fun we had that day. After passing through the city we followed the highway northeast along the shore of Lake Superior.

We paused for a lunch at a Dairy Queen and as we neared the Canadian border we found the Grand Portage National Monument and decided to take a look. At first I wasn't sure I could park the rig, but I shoehorned it into the one small RV space available so we could have a nice visit.

The monument grounds featured a palisade plus four reconstructed buildings furnished with period trade goods. Costumed docents gave us some very nice presentations about the functions and lifestyles of the various folks in the trading post I was, for instance, surprised to hear that only the educated folks were allowed inside the palisade; the lower class canoe paddlers as well as the natives had to camp and live outside the palisade. In fact, some reconstructed examples of the tents of the voyageurs and bark teepees of the natives were located just outside the palisade, complete with a voyageur and a Native American guide to explain things.

Also outside the palisade was a reconstructed warehouse that was now used as a boathouse. One of the huge, 40 foot birchbark trading canoes was hanging from the ceiling, and some smaller scale versions were on the floor where we could get a close look. The docent was clearly a skilled woodworker and explained several aspects of the construction of the canoes while we were there. The large canoes ran the route from the post eastward to Montreal whereas the smaller 24 foot canoes were used to extract the furs from the Native Americans in the huge territories out west. Smaller canoes were necessary in the interior due to the smaller size of the rivers and the requirement for frequent portages.

The trade goods that powered this enormous commercial network were displayed in the reconstructed Great Hall. The main trade was beaver pelts in exchange for firearms, tools, textiles, and supplies such as gunpowder, bullets, and flints. What I had never known was that it was only the innermost layer of fur that was finally used somewhat like felt to make the beaver hats, so much of the processing involved removing the coarser outer layers of fur and the skin itself. The display included almost every kind of pelt in the fur trade plus many others, and I spent several minutes carefully stroking each one because they were very different in appearance and feel. The grizzly bear fur really glistened in the sunlight in a way that none of the other furs did, but it was surprisingly coarse to the touch. Fox fur, either red or white from the arctic fox, were some of the softest furs.

Originally, the Great Hall was used for daily business transactions but also on special occasions as a feasting place for several hundred people. These feasts occurred at the end of the annual Rendezvous where the beaver pelts were transshipped from the small canoes to the large canoes for the voyage east. The trade goods coming from Montreal and points further east were transferred from the large canoes to the small canoes to continue the journey west for trading with the Native Americans. One part of the reconstructed hall had a large trestle table laid out with the dinnerware settings that would have been used by the factor and his managers for entertaining at that time.

One end of the Great Hall had a room furnished as the bedroom of the resident manager, complete with a canopy bed! Other than the bed, the room looked rather rustic with a fireplace, a bearskin on the floor, and some working garb hung from pegs on the walls. All in all it was a comfortable and quite functional, but by no means luxurious, room.

We wrapped up our visit by peeking in at the kitchen next door. As at Mt. Vernon and many other colonial mansions, the kitchen was probably separated from the main building for safety reasons. It was, however, built large enough to feed those hungry hordes during the rendezvous and the fireplace was enormous. The docents mentioned that during the re-enactment of the rendezvous in early August, that fireplace was chock a block with all the cooking utensils required to feed the folks. I was loathe to leave the fort, but we were weren't sure how long it would take to pass through Canadian Customs and we did want to get a campsite near Thunder Bay, so we reluctantly departed.

As it turned out, for once I didn't get my vehicle unpacked by Canadian Customs. I had written out the dates, places, and length of stay for all our previous visits to Canada, and maybe that helped. Monika had also prepped me with the "alcohol" answer, which was "1 bottle of wine and 6 bottles of beer", and I had practiced that phrase so that I didn't stutter when I had to give it to the agent. After a visit to the Ontario Welcome Center that also had a convenient currency exchange, we headed off to Thunder Bay.

We arrived Kakabeka Falls Provincial Park around 5 p.m., and there was quite a line forming up behind us. They were, unfortunately, out of electric sites so we had to settle for a non-electric one. It was, at least, a pull through and I thought we were home free until I saw the boulder poking up out of the driveway. That did worry me a bit, but after we bumped into our site and found out how slanted it was, I reversed and backed the trailer so that the downhill side was on top of the boulder, which brought us almost back to level. We almost ran out of wood slabs to prop up the corner stabilizing legs, but finally we got the trailer roughly even side to side and level fore and aft.

Being level might sound like a trivial thing to folks who don't camp out, but I think anyone who camps can readily agree that having a level spot to sleep is really quite important. As soon as you sleep on even a very mild slope, you find yourself gradually sliding downhill during the night. Apparently sleepers, like water, tend to flow downhill but I have not heard that stated as a principle of physics as yet. Being modest and self-effacing, I would call it "Bob's Rule", of course. If you ever do read about it in a textbook, just remember you read it here first. The consequences of this Law of Nature depend, as it were, on what awaits you on the downhill slope. Having slid into ice cold pools of water that had leaked into the tent on several occasions, I had formed a strong aversion to this process and very much preferred a level bed.

The second reason was for our refrigerator, which became an even more critical creature comfort as we did not have any current to run the air conditioning. We found that if we had 120 volt AC, the refrigerator would run even on a bit of a slant, but when we ran it on propane the refrigerator had to be level for all the stuff to flow around like it should. Since both Monika and I were looking forward to a cold (root) beer, having the refrigerator working was rather important. We had our beers with our usual sandwich dinner and then settled in for some more computer work. But we kept it short because, after all, we were running only on batteries, and then turned in for the night to catch up on some more sleep