2015 Big Truck around Lake Superior, Days 6, 7 & 8

Yes, the title is unusual in that we rarely combine days. The last 2 days in the Apostle Islands were amazing, and coupled with last night at Copper Harbor this has been one of the best vacations we've had.

Here are a few shots from the Apostle Islands days.  I'll explain in a bit why I don't quite have the heart to give each day its full due, even though I had a fantastic tribute to Rowdy Roddy Piper planned and everything.

After 2 fantastic days exploring the Apostle Island area, we moved on to the Keweenaw Peninsula and Copper Harbor. Our site in the Ft Wilkins State Park served as the perfect spot to go explore the point in our first real Jeep side trip in a long time.

We got back to the site around 7pm, so I did a quick recon ride to check out the trailhead and squeeze in a few miles on the famed Copper Harbor mountain bike trails.

Back at camp, I prepped my riding gear for Sunday, planning a full day on the trails.

OK, if you read this blog for the travel sights & pictures, you can probably stop here. I've always written this blog about and for our family, and today something happened that changed our trip and our lives, especially mine. I'm going to take this space to put virtual pen to paper while the emotions of the past 12hrs are raw and exposed.  Call it cathartic, selfish, therapeutic, whatever you want.

Today the world lost a great man in Marvin Jay Beute, my father.  I was set to go ride the trails, and since we had no cell service or internet, it was to be an uninterrupted day. During the night, a rainstorm came that delayed my riding plans, so on a whim I took the Jeep into town to see if I could find a wireless signal. I did, and a series of more than 20 texts came pouring in, mostly group texts about general nonsense. One caught my eye, from my brother, that I will never forget.

During a brief few moments, my heart sank as I watched the 3 little bubbles on my phone, waiting for the confirmation I knew was coming. My father had succumbed to a years long battle with Parkinson's disease just an hour earlier, and I was just now getting the news.

In the frantic next 30 minutes, I broke the news to my family, packed up the site in a daze, and while waiting in line for the RV dump station ahead of the 12hr drive home, had the following exchange with my 7 year old daughter Jordan.

J - "Dad, I know you miss Papa B (tears are streaming down my face as I try to keep it together), but aren't you glad you'll still get to do your most favorite thing ever that he taught you?"

Me - "What's my most favorite thing?" (this exchange is not helping to slow the tears)

J - "You know, to fix stuff.  And, aren't you glad he'll get to see Grandma B? (who she's never met due to cancer taking her 16 years ago)  I wish I'd met her. You said she loved kids." (still not helping with the tears).

Then she just reached out, gave me a quick hug and said "I miss him too.  I'll write you a note so when you miss him you can just read it and it will help you."

I could tell my wife Kimberly had talked with her, but not until later did I find out that the 'fixing stuff' and the note were all her ideas.

At this point I realized they were helping to fix me.  I know the Lord works in mysterious ways, and although I don't understand this one, I can accept it.

I owe a lot of things to my father, so while it's fresh I'm going to say a few words about the most honest, hard working, selfless, intelligent man I've ever known.

Thank you for teaching me that if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. That even though it's almost always a little bit harder, it is possible to accomplish difficult tasks AND care for people. Thank you for teaching the value of a hard day's work, and that no matter how hopeless or broken, anything can be fixed.

He set an example of these teachings every day of his 72 years on this earth and through everyone he came across during that time. For that I am grateful. What he didn't teach me was how to fix the void he is leaving in this world. I will miss him immeasurably.

2015 Big Truck around Lake Superior, Day 5

Day 5 started with some slow meandering around the site since none of us really wanted to leave. The waking up process is something to behold. I do my best to hold back a frantic desire to get on to the next place if its a travel day. The females in my immediate family would suggest that I'm not very good with patience. A request for more time generally forces me into a stifled reaction similar to this.

Ultimately, we decided to go for a little drive down to the end of the peninsula to see what we could see. It was extremely windy, so there wasn't much activity in the little waterfront village.

The actual Provincial Park is pretty large, it covers a good chunk of the peninsula. We came across the southern boundary as we were exploring some of the cottages along Superior.

 We're going to need to come back when we have a bit more time (easy to say, hard to do), as there are so many cool hikes and incredible views.

We headed back to check out the visitors centre and have one last crack at the playground. This time Jordan mimicked a few boys she had seen earlier and starting climbing everything in sight, including the trees.

You probably can't see the panic on her face, but right about this time the park rangers were flying around in their pickups and UTVs, wearing construction-yellow vests and orange helmets. There had been multiple confirmed bear sightings, and they were chasing one toward their live traps. I envisioned it ending something like this.

On our way out of the park, I had remembered one little stream crossing that had a great view of Sleeping Giant on our way in. We ultimately found it and did a panic stop since there was no turnout that we could fit into.  This rushed, barefoot shot from the middle of the road captured the reason for the park's name quite well.

Now it was time to follow up on Bev's advice and swing by the Sleeping Giant Brewery. It was minutes off our route, so we stopped by to check it out.

The outside was fairly nondescript, as it is in a strip mall in an industrial complex.  Inside, it was small but clearly busy. The phone was ringing nonstop and at least 3 others stopped in to refill growlers or buy takeout since they didn't have a taproom yet. Oh, and any place with that little space that decides to dedicate some to an old BSA is alright by me.

We grabbed a growler of their Skull Rock stout and were on our way (yes that's a Mulletude shirt. Tripelroot travels wherever we do).

Off to Tettegouche.  This time our border experience was very smooth.  The agent just needed Jordan to climb out and show her smiling face, and we needed to list off all the fruits & veggies we had on board.  He didn't seem terribly impressed with my visegrips in place of a cotterpin on the towing setup, but other than that we were back in the states. 

The drive along 61 on the north shore of Superior is amazing.  Similar to US2 along the south edge of the UP, but today the wind was howling and we got to drive along crashing waves for a couple of hours. There are worse ways to pass the time. Then we saw the sign for Tettegouche, then the visitors center. Wow.

If you get anywhere near this area, do yourself a favor and stop here. It doubles as a rest area, and it is impressive. MDOT taxes must be incredibly lucrative, because they spared no expense. The back of the building overlooks Superior, and has an amphitheater, outdoor fireplace, trailhead, etc.

After getting our site info, we headed up to the campground. Our site was equipped with power (3 ft away, a bit different than our Canadian friends), but was more set up for tents. The curb allowed the Big Truck to only use the front 1/3 of the site, so we had a large grassy area to play tag. Jordan had been cooped up for a while, so we had a rousing game of family tag for a while. Few things are more amusing than watching a kid start to add rules to the game using the lay of the land. Deer trails became 'safe zones', etc.  Good times. Of course, tag usually escalates quickly because in my head this is what we are actually playing.

After our game of tag, Jordan wanted to do some hiking. There are a couple of trails that originate right out of the campground (very small, less than 30 sites), so we decided to go see some waterfalls.

The trails are quite well marked, and led this within a half a mile.

We played around on the rocks for a bit, gave up a peace offering of blood to the black flies, and headed for the next falls. Along the way we joined up with the Superior Hiking Trail, which would be an incredible nearly 300 mile through-hike. Bucket list.

At the top of these falls, the enginerd in me started freaking out. There was an old suspension bridge spanning the river, so I just stood there staring and trying to explain statics & dynamics to a 7 year old who was playing with a dead crayfish.  Not sure how much she retained.

As we hiked back, we started formulating a new plan for the next couple of days. Since we had just seen 3-4 'root beer falls' as these are described in our household, we discussed bypassing Copper Falls State Park in favor of the Apostle Islands. More to come tomorrow.

2015 Big Truck around Lake Superior, Day 4

While the rest of the campground (and our campsite) was sleeping, I snuck out for a quick walk to the visitors centre - the path ran right next to our site.  This was the reward.

The lake was perfectly still and clear. I can't imagine being a college student and calling this 'work' for the summer. Sorry, up here there aren't college students, only people that go to university after grade 13.

Once on the road, we only made it about 10 minutes and ran into this.

Two separate times we sat on the road at a complete stop, totaling over 45 minutes. When we got word at a gas station what had happened, and then drove past the scene a bit later, it was chilling.  I won't go into detail, but it was a fatal accident and we were a bit more understanding of the delay after that.

Acting on yet another tip from our buddy Dallas, we stopped at a roadside Provincial Park called Rainbow Falls. It was the perfect break from our drive and stoppages, and we had one seriously antsy 7 yr old.  Case in point.

A short hike down revealed multiple levels of falls, each one being explored more intently than the last.

Enjoying her time out of the big truck, Jordan was scampering all over everything. Ultimately I asked her to pose by the sign, and we all got a good laugh when she tried to brace herself against it and discovered it was swinging from hinges at the top and almost hit her in the face. Yes, we were a bit stir crazy.

While this was happening, Kimberly was heading back across the bridge, leading to this photo op.

We then worked our way back up the stairs to the big truck, knowing that any energy burned now would be repaid with momentary silence when we got back on the road.  I also had a full sandal blowout, and am now essentially employing one of these whenever donning the Keens.

Over the past 3 nights we had nearly exhausted our supply of Michigan beers, so we starting searching for the nearest Beer Store along our route. I was determined to drink some local Canadian microbrews, but the beer scene in Canada is still dominated by the big guys.

We found a Beer Store on the way, and I stopped with the full intention of buying whatever was made closest to that region. Then I met Bev, which may be the most occupation-appropriate name ever.

Bev explained to me that down by Sleeping Giant (where we were headed), there was a place that made their own beer. She then went in the back to rummage around and show me what kind of bottle they sold.  It was a growler. God bless Bev.  Only after we got on the road did we realize that Sleeping Giant Brewery was more than an hour away from our campground, and was closer to Thunder Bay. Either way, thanks Bev.

Once we made it to Sleeping Giant, we found out again that a site denoted as 'electric' just means that there is power in the general vicinity. After C$250 in deposit, we had the required 200 metres of 30amp extension cords for our site with electricity. It did not matter, as the site was more than worth it.

Not only was site 218-e large enough to turn around the big truck, but it was also lakeside and had the following view of the Sleeping Giant rock formation.

We set up camp and headed for the playground. Jordan had somehow gone multiple vacation days without a sniff of a playground.  Likely a record, but these aren't things we are interested in tracking. Once we got to the playground, we discovered a beach as well, although it looked like they trucked in some sand and dragged the beach with a tractor.  Either way, it wasn't rocks.

Now we both had our playground. I got to ride around on the beach, she got to chase seagulls.

We then found the elusive 'giant wooden single swingset', something that seems insanely impractical, but made for a cool picture.

Next up was another oddity, something I'll call the 'infant swing cleverly fashioned to resemble an old jock strap'. You be the judge. Also, any time you can mix in a few chains, rivets, and galvanized brackets into a toddler swing, you do it, don't you?  In the States someone's lawyer would own this entire park. We're moving to Canada.

We retired to the campsite, which to this point is definitely in our top 5 sites ever (something we also do not track, so there could be 27 sites in our top 5).  Here are a few shots of life at 218-e.

We played on the rocks (Jordan invented an obstacle course game, it ended when I fell in) for as long as we wanted.  Pretty tough to beat this playground.

Then it was time to bust out Slayer, Jordan's aptly named fishing rod.

Our jalapeno brat/bobber combo proved unsuccessful, prompting me to have this internal dialogue with Slayer.

We capped off the night with a few sunset shots of Sleeping Giant, then chased a few bats around the site, encouraging them to eat the hummingbird-sized mosquitos that ingest DEET like PEDs.

Day 5 takes us out of Canada, back to the States and on to Tettegouche State Park in Minnesota. Farewell Canada, we will miss thee.