The boys and I headed up the north shore to go camping for the long Memorial Day weekend at Crosby Manitou State Park. The park is a satellite of Tettegouche SP and has 25 walk-in sites along the Manitou River and Benson Lake. I reserved one of the lake sites (#21) about ¼ miles from the parking lot.
We got a late start out of the cities and hit traffic, so we didn't get to the park until after 10 pm. It was dark, the boys were tired, and as we headed down the forest trail to the campsite, Sean was sure that I was leading us into a bear’s den. Armed with a trio of headlamps and much hand-holding, we eventually reached the entrance to our site, which was a climb up several sets of log stairs. I was double-packing and after faltering on one of the steps, fell backwards on to Sean, which didn't help his spirits much. I twisted my ankle pretty bad, but we finally got to the site. All was well once I had the tent set up – home.
We woke up to beautiful weather on Saturday. The whole weekend was nice – temps in the 70’s, slight breeze, and no bugs. Our site overlooked the lake and we could barely see our neighbors on either side. And thanks to a severe ice storm over the winter, there was plenty of downed trees and wood in the vicinity. All-in-all, it was an ideal setup.
After retrieving the canoe and the rest of our bags from the van, I twisted up some eggs and sausage for breakfast. We then headed out on the lake for some trolling. The boys quickly got sick of that, so we came in and went on a hike. We went further than I planned (or my ankle liked), but had a nice 2-3 hour hike along the Manitou and through forest. The boys played 'army patrol' for over half the loop and helped keep us safe from German and Japanese soldiers and planes (we switched theatres indiscriminently). Towards the end of the hike the boys were getting pretty whiny, so I pulled out the DQ card to get us through. Naturally, the Silver Bay DQ I remember from 30 years ago is no longer a DQ, but we made do with ice cream sandwiches. We grilled some brats for dinner, had a nice fire, and played Go Fish in the tent.
Sunday was another beautiful day. We tried the trolling thing again - same result - before packing out to Split Rock Lighthouse. It was a nice diversion and got us down to the lake for some rock-throwing and cooling off.
We stopped for dinner at a local place in Finland (Our Place) and got back in time to try some bobber fishing from shore. Sean’s ‘snag’ turned into a nice 12-inch brook trout, but that was it for fish. I had it out of the water for a bit removing the hook, so I didn’t want to wait for pictures.
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