Day 1303 – Roger’s Island

Hours of Daylight – 11:44

Winter is coming on strong here. That’s probably just my interpretation, but it got quite cold last night (around 20 deg. F). I still have the air conditioner in the bedroom window, and the heat is not yet on in our apartment. According to the thermometer on the weather radio the temp in the bedroom was 61 this morning, but the airconditioner temp was pegged off the low end of its scale, so i’m thinking the actual temp was somewhere in the middle. Certainly felt colder than 61.

The cats just go nuts when it gets cold. They run and run and run. If we had a bigger place that would not be a problem, but considering there is just the one “hall” from the front to the back it gets a bit challenging to cross side to side and not get hit by a rocketing furry thing.

So, we’re just back from yet another trip. This time it was to inspect the newly-purchased land of Professor Roger Feldman on Raspberry Island in Lake Vermillion.

Lake Vermillion is in Northern Minnesota near the Iron Range and the town of Ely (pronounced eelee). The north shore of the lake is very near the southern boundary of the BWCA (Boundary Waters Canoe Area). Raspberry Island is a modest, peanut-shaped rocky island near the Southern shore of the lake.

The plan was to kayak over to the island, camp, and inspect the two new parcels Roger had just recently bought at auction, but not as yet seen.

To keep the story short it all worked out fine in the end. We arrived at McKinley park, the planned put-in, but found the wind and rain a bit too strong for our tastes. So we drove West to the next bay and put in there thus shaving off a couple of miles of paddling.

Roger’s property has no improvements beyond a steel frame dock that was already elevated out of the water in preparation for winter. The landing zone was difficult to access and there were no trails leading away from the shore. We had to get out of the boats, climb up onto the shore and then haul the fully loaded kayaks up between the saplings that we were rapidly trampling.

We then blazed a trail inland through very dense brush eventually finding an ideal camping spot near the very top of the island amidst several red and white pine trees.

Sunday dawned clear and bracingly cold. We spent the morning hours officially clearing the trail back down to the dock, then after lunch Roger and Annette took our double kayak and did some exploring of the Southern shore. I stayed on land and strung up a clothesline to speed the drying of our rain-soaked things from the day before.

Sunday stayed completely clear, cold and bone dry. Once the sun set we had a magnificent star-filled sky and a momentary appearance of a crescent moon straight out of a fairy tale.

Monday dawned cloudy and threatening, but the rain held off while we broke camp and carted everything down our newly-cleared trail. The paddle back, with a mild, but very cold breeze in our faces, proved very short taking only 30 minutes. A bald eagle perched in a spiny pine tree directly in our path and stayed there while we passed underneath.

We unloaded, segregated our equipment, loaded our cars and parted company for the drive home. Annette and i took a slow drive through the “Quad Cities” of the Iron Range: Virginia, Eveleth, Mountain Iron and Gilbert.

Not too long after i’d arrived in Minnesota a woman at a party said, “i’m originally from Virginia.”

“Really,” i said, “where?”

“Virginia.”

“Yeah, but where?”

“Virginia! You want the address or something?”

Well, i’ve now seen Virginia. Annette counted 15 bars on the five block main street… more bars than any Minnesota town.

The Iron Range is home to some staggering statistics. My favorite is that at one time 25% of The World’s iron ore came from there. Also a personal favorite of mine is that the iron ore that became the steel that became the battleship Missouri in the Brooklyn Navy Yard came from The Range.

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