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Another good night of rest, especially after the exertion of yesterday’s Grand Island loop. We had breakfast at the motel — coffee, yogurt, & pastries, and took our time getting going for our first ride where our GPS units actually list climbs — one at 289 ft and a second at 105 ft. Nothing compared to what we’re used to, but we’ve been very spoiled by flat rides so far.
Our ride to Grand Marais (Ma-ray) was on very nice roads with good shoulders except for a short section through a national forest. Pretty light traffic, too. Light on scenery except for trees most of the way, but we did get a good look at Lake Superior from an overlook at the fed park.
We didn’t have reservations, so on arrival, Dana went to the office. She was first told that they were sold out, but Dee asked her to hold on and disappeared out the back door. She came back with good news: Mike, one of the campground workers, had his unused tent on a site right behind the office. She signed us up and we went around to survey the site. Mike and his boss Jack were on the porch and we had a long conversation with them and a couple other workers about our trip and how they each got to Grand Marais.
Mike, though, was the focus. A very chatty guy of Polish decent, he was a seasonal worker who also had a camper on the other side of the campground and was in the process of selling the tent. He offered for us to use the tent instead of setting up ours and we jumped at the chance. It was 4 times the size of ours with a door and standing room. Aside from a few puddles around the windows, it was a castle with plenty of room for our pads — and it really blocked the constant wind from Lake Superior.
We talked with Mike quite a while, and he finally went to wrap up his workday and we got our showers and went for a walk on the beach. The beach was deep sand and I plodded through with Dana for about a 1/2 mile and then headed back to town and the campground while she continued her beach stroll. There were a lot of people picking through the rocks on the waterline — we later found they were looking for agates to polish.
Back at camp, I worked on a blog entry and Mike stopped by again to drop off some firewood and a couple of camp chairs. What luxury! Camp chairs instead of the hard picnic table bench. What a nice guy!
When Dana got back, we walked into town for our happy hour cocktails at the Breakwall restaurant. We then headed back to camp to make dinner and enjoy a roaring fire before walking (rather than crawling) into Mike’s tent for the night.
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