Headed up north for our annual Memorial Day sojourn into the wilderness. In addition to me and the boys, we had my brother Ben, his two sons, and their dog, Millie. Every year the minivan gets a little tighter, and we were somehow able to add the dog to the mix. After a late start out of the cities (situation normal), we made a quick pit stop in Duluth at Grandma's house to pick up the second canoe and eventually made the Grand Marais Best Western sometime after 11.
Day 1: The Best Western actually has a pretty good breakfast buffet, so we loaded up there and made our usual stops in town: the Beaver House (very helpful), Holiday, Ranger Station for permit, and finally the coffee shop. That's when the fun started... You can reach Crocodile Lake via two entry points, East Bearskin and the Crocodile River. Bearskin is the most established and right off the Gunflint Trail. However it includes a steep portage, and given my recent ACL surgery Ben would be doing all the heavy lifting. So we decided (firm consensus) to try the other route - longer paddle, but only one small portage. Well, it's also more remote, and after travelling 30 miles of dirt road and several scouting hikes, we couldn't find it. Score 1 for Wilderness. No problem, I found a nice map shortcut back to the Trail, and we were soon on our way. Well, the closer this shortcut got to the Trail, the more narrow and rustic it became, until we were eventually travelling what might have been just a snowmobile trail - in a Honda Odyssey. We had to ford several small streams, and Ben was doing his part to hit every rock and boulder. At one point I had to hop out and tuck a piece of the undercarriage back in its seat in order to stop the incessant scraping noise. I opted not at that point to inform Ben about the separated molding behind the front tire. Eventually we hit a stream that we couldn't cross and had to backtrack all the way out the way we came. Score 2 for Wilderness. So, 120 minutes into a 20 minute trip we pulled into the E. Bearskin camp ground and lake access point.
 |
| I'm pretty sure this was all there when we started... |
From there things started to look up: we made good time on the paddle, Millie was good in the canoe (a question mark at onset), and the portage only required a couple trips. Furthermore, we had Crocodile Lake all to ourselves!
We ended up taking the same campsite that Mark and I stayed at in February. Remarkably (it was a couple weeks after fishing opener), no one had stayed at the campsite since. At the very least, they didn't use the extra wood that Mark and I had left.
 |
| Rain was in the forecast, so we proactively set up a little tarp city - wise move as it turned out. |
After setting up camp, we headed out for a couple hours of fishing. The rap on Crocodile is "a lot of walleyes, but no size". This was fine with us, though I was starting to wonder about the size thing after my first fish.
 |
| No bigger than a rapala! |
Day 2:
