Konnie LeMay / Lake Superior Magazine
Wawa
The group paddled a voyageur canoe in Wawa, Ontario, with Naturally Superior Adventures.
A Circle Tour special report
Konnie LeMay, the editor of Lake Superior Magazine, is currently circling the Big Lake with our Fall Bus Tour group. Here’s her dispatch from the first part of the trip, from Duluth clockwise to the eastern Upper Peninsula.
Avance!
Or at least that was the idea when David gave us hardy voyageurs the French command to move forward.
We had already been paddling around the edge of glass-calm Lake Superior on its farthest point east near Wawa, Ontario. David Wells, founder of Naturally Superior Adventures, had explained the geology of the billions-of-years-old volcanic rock and the colorful (colourful, actually, since we were in Ontario) past of the region.
Now, the only thing that stood in our way of returning to base for a fantastic meal of homemade vegetable soup and bread, fresh fish and luscious desserts was the push of the Michipicoten River through a narrow opening in the sand bar. We passed through here on our way to our lakeshore tour, but the current was with us. Here, it was being particularly stubborn about letting us return.
We put our backs into the paddling, I put in a few loud “Stroke! Stroke!” (heartfelt but probably not helpful), and … moved a little farther away from our destination. That didn’t seem right, or fair, frankly. But who said a river needs to be fair.
Despite our best voyageur efforts, the river won this night – and was that a rippling gurgle or a Michipicoten chuckle I heard as we decided to beach on the pebbly shore on the “wrong” side of the sandbar?
With the bow of the canoe firmly against land, and with my companion paddlers already slipping off their shoes and socks to disembark, I decided to bravely jump off the back, where I was sitting, to pull the large Montreal canoe parallel to the shoreline. OK, I was trying to ease off the back and when the water reached beyond my thigh – and with my jean leg thoroughly drenched – I realized the water here was deeper than it looked. So scrambling like a short pup going up a tall stair, I managed to pull myself back into the canoe and exit off the bow.
Read the rest of Konnie’s Circle Tour report and see more photos, too.
Bayfield Apple Festival has two Apple Queens this year: Twins Karli and Kellie Weidinger are the great-grandchildren of George Weidinger, who started the historic Weidinger Orchard in 1908. The Apple Queen tradition “started in 1962 as a way to honor the apple growers of Bayfield,” writes Hope McLeod for the Bayfield County Journal. The festival is October 7-9 this year.
Battling sea lamprey: Fisheries and Oceans Canada treated the Kaministiquia River near Thunder Bay in the continued fight against the invasive parasite, reports Nicole Dixon for TBNewsWatch.
Fall raptor migration continues: “Counters at Duluth’s Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory had tallied nearly 40,000 raptors in the fall migration by midweek,” writes Sam Cook for the Duluth News Tribune.
Ely, Minnesota, gets love from National Geographic: The popular entry point to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is one of the World’s Best Towns for Outdoor Thrills.
Speaking of the Boundary Waters: Amy and Dave Freeman concluded their Year in the Wilderness last week, WTIP reports. To support the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters, the couple “paddled some 2,000 miles and visited an estimated 500 lakes and rivers during the past year.” You can listen to their dispatches from the field here.
Iron Belle Trail grows: When finished, the Iron Belle Trail will connect Detroit to Ironwood. A new section in the western Upper Peninsula – from Ironwood to Bessemer – is almost complete, reports the Daily Globe.