Monday is Thanksgiving!: Hold on, U.S. residents, don’t get too excited by a day off. But the Ontario shores can – and will – celebrate Canada's Thanksgiving Day. While the visitor centers at places like Lake Superior Provincial Park near Wawa might be closed, you can still enter the grounds and walk the beautiful Awausee Hiking Trail (top) or lounge at Red Rock Lake in the Muskoka chairs constructed from old park signs by the staff (right).
If you want to get the kids out of the house for Thanksgiving and you’re on the western Lakehead, this cool-idea blog, TBaywithKids.ca, by Bonnie Scheidel features some farm fun to enjoy with children on the holiday and other times of the fall and winter season. Gammondale Farm near Thunder Bay (seen here) features its Pumpkin Fest weekends in October plus Thanksgiving Monday with a corn maze and lots of actitivies.
A new place to park your dog in Superior: The Superior City Council approved the city’s first-ever dog park, which will be near Millennium Trail in the Billings Park neighborhood. It may be open by the end of the year, reports Dan Hanger for Fox21.
Highway 210 reopens through Jay Cooke State Park: The scenic road that runs from the Fond du Lac neighborhood of Duluth through Jay Cooke State Park reopened Wednesday for the first time in five years, reports the Duluth News Tribune. Minnesota Highway 210, heavily damaged by washouts and mudslides in the historic 2012 flood, has been rebuilt and strengthened. Even though this stretch of road was closed, access to the park was available from the west on Highway 210. The road is open just in time for autumn color peak this weekend, says Kristine Hiller, park naturalist, who adds that color near the road in the park is at about 80 percent peak.
Sure Persians are great, but can they fight crime?: Ontario had a great food fight recently and Thunder Bay’s signature treat, the pink-frosted Persian, bested all others as the province’s tastiest dish. One of the rounds in the food fight mounted by TVO.org pitted Persians against Butter Tarts, more popular on the eastern side of Lake Superior. Persians, as mentioned, won that round and went on to beat Peameal Bacon as the best Ontario dish. Butter Tarts, meanwhile, were quietly helping their Sault Ste. Marie community fight crime when local bakers competed in the Butter Tart Festival and Crimestopper’s Run Against Crime fundraiser, reports SooToday. Sounds like it was winners all around.
Bike Magazine pulling into Marquette: Word on the Street tells us the 1.5 million readers of this mountain bike enthusiast magazine will get treated to an issue filled with Marquette after the publication brings a 15-person entourage into town Monday, Oct. 9, for 16 days to test the latest bikes and equipment on the local trails.
A new president for Algoma University: Asima Vezina will take the helm of Algoma University as president and vice chancellor on Oct. 23. Asima is very familiar with local education, having recently served on the AU Board of Directors and as superintendent for the Algoma District School Board. The university reported this week that she met with students, staff and faculty for a warm welcome into the AU community. In this photo she receives a gift from Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig President Darrell Boissoneau. Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig is an Anishinaabe university run in conjunction with Algoma.
Surfs up, kind of: GrindTV recently featured an online video of all you need to know about surfing the Great Lakes with lots of looks at Lake Superior. We are about to enter the peak surf season for the Big Lake, when, as one surfer explained in spring 2016 to Outside magazine, “The worse the weather, the better the waves.”
Lake is up, too: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reports that Lake Superior started October at 11 in. (29 cm) above its long-term water level average, 4 in. (10 cm) above last year¹s level and 24 in. (61 cm) above its chart datum level. Last month contributed to the increase, according to the Corps: "The net water supplies to Lake Superior were above average in September. The level of Lake Superior rose 2 cm (0.8 in) last month, while on average the lake declines 2 cm (0.8 in) in September."
Farm to fork: Minnesota author, adventurer and food journalist Beth Dooley will visit in Grand Marais and Duluth this weekend as part of her Farm to Fork tour talking about local food choices with communities around central and northern Minnesota. Beth has authored or co-authored numerous award-winning cookbooks about Heartland food traditions. Her food memoir, In Winter’s Kitchen: Growing Roots and Breaking Bread in the Northern Heartland, published in 2015, was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award. In Winter’s Kitchen “personalizes the path from farm to fork with heart and skill,” according to the Wall Street Journal, and demonstrates that even in a place with a short growing season, food grown locally and organically can be healthy, community-based, environmentally conscious, and—most of all—delicious. Her most recent collaboration was on The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen with Lakota chef Sean Sherman. For many years, Dooley has guided kayak tours for Wilderness Inquiry in the Bayfield Peninsula focused on paddling among the Apostle Islands and sampling locally produced foods. She also writes about food for Lake Superior Magazine. On Saturday, 7 p.m. at Drury Lane Books, Grand Marais, Beth will be joined by local cookbook memoir author Kathy Rice (Secrets of The Pie Place Café). On Sunday, 2 p.m. at Zenith Bookstore in Duluth, Beth will be joined by a host of regional cookbook authors and local food advocates – Mary Dougherty (Life in a Northern Town) from Bayfield and Lucie Amundsen (Locally Laid) and Beatrice Ojakangas (Homemade) from Duluth. Lake Superior Magazine Editor Konnie LeMay will moderate the conversation at Zenith. Both events are free.
The end time is near: For entering the 23rd annual Lake Superior Photo Contest. Link up today and send in your best shots by Oct. 16. This shot, “Shelf Cloud Storm Sunburst” at Munising, Michigan, by Cari Povenz won the Grand Prize for the 22nd contest.
Photo credits: Lake Superior Provincial Park (2 images); Gammondale Farm; Kris Hiller / Jay Cooke State Park; Aaron Peterson/Travel Marquette; Algoma University; Milkweed Editions; Cari Povenz