Devil's Track Lake Campground - Day 1

Long stressful day! Up at 5:30am, which is WAY early for me but becoming more usual lately. Out of the house with dogs and gear by about 6:30am. Good job! We hit some rush hour traffic in The Cities but for the most part the drive was smooth. At this point, it’s all about avoiding I35 and the numerous closures. We made our Dunn Bros. stop in Hugo, just north of St. Paul. No samples out yet in the grocery store yet. Darn! Lol Back on the road. We made it to the US/Canadian border around 3pm. Lorrie went into professional mode and I just did what told me. We parked on the U.S. side so she could go in. I had a muzzle ready for Emma Blue in case an office came to my car. No one did. Lorrie came out about 20 minutes later and said we needed to cross into Canada and then come back. Well, she needed to. I didn’t. But we decided I should drive since it’s my car. That’s when I started getting nervous. I hadn’t prepared to cross so all I had with me was my driver’s license and no birth certificate. Lorrie explained what we were doing so he let us go with a warning to me that I need more ID to get into Canada. Then crossing back to the U.S., the officer gave me a hard time again until Lorrie explained. He told us to park and that our IDs would be inside with the officer Lorrie was working with. All this time Emma Blue was sitting quietly in the back with her muzzle on. Not a peep from her. That was totally God’s spirit holding her back! She didn’t even try to get the muzzle off. Weird! So, in my camping clothes I went with her to the office. He asked a few questions for each of us and obviously had some things on the screen about her. He asked me what I do for a living and when I told him, he asked if I could stay for a little while. Lorrie had warned me to just answer the questions and do what they want. So, of course, I said I would. He said, "Yeah, there are a lot of people here who have issues!" So the ICE officer was joking around with us! Interesting! Then he took what seemed like a personal call, while probably listening to us on a speaker. He was definitely watching us. Anyway, long story short, we did well and she got her TN status in her passport. Now she can start working again at the beginning of August. A major relief!!

Our reward… camping!

We drove back down the way we had come. Toward Grand Marais about 40 miles. Then we took Gunflint Trail, the same road we took to Camp Menogyn for our first BWCA trip. A little bit, maybe 7 miles or so, down the road we took a left on CR 8, which took us to Devil’s Track Lake Campground. It’s a small state forest campground with only 16 sites. We were hoping since it’s mid-week we could get a good site. The campground is on Devil’s Track Lake (surprise!) with 12 of the 16 sites on the lake directly. All 4 of the inland sites were available. Surprise again! One after another the lake side sites were taken. Until 14, which was open along with 15. We took 14, though I wasn’t happy about it at first. There were some pretty steep steps that went down to the water. I could see us falling down them in the dark or one of the dogs falling down them. And with Lorrie’s bum ankle (still from canoeing the Blue Earth), I was worried about her getting down there. I was wrong! It was a great site! We set up the tent near the stairs as it was the only place it would fit. But the door faced away from the stairs! lol

The view being above the water was gorgeous! We got everything set up and I got a fire started so we could start our lounging immediately. We had stopped at the Co-op in Grand Marais to eat dinner, so we were set. The dogs were pretty happy just to not be driving anymore! (= The campground was very quiet, even with all those lake sites full. There were motorboats on the lake and some float planes. So it isn’t totally peaceful.

The sky is light and we’re already heading for bed. The sky stays lighter longer up North and it’s before 10pm. But we’ve been up since 5:30am and it’s been a stressful day!