Arrival to Atikokan

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You know, I brought the last four Harry Potter books thinking that out of the minimum 28 hours I'd be on the road I could read them... but this place is too fascinating that it's probably one of the only things that could distract me from getting to the seventh book (really, I've been averaging a book a day in hopes of reading them all through the seventh). We spent most of all day driving on a scenic road right next to Lake Superior. It was great just driving in the woods with the lake right, literally on the right, to us. Kind of got us all excited too for what lay ahead of us as we left cities and real highways and drove north.

Today is our last day of civilization, however different this kind of civilization is from what we normally have everyday, i.e. Starbucks on almost every corner of our multilane highway roads; cars upon cars pulling out of subdivisions after subdivisions, all of whom really need to drive only a few miles to get everything they need to at least subsist; and a general love/hate relationship with suburban sprawl and the continuous construction (road, housing, or commercial) that comes along with it. That's no degradation to what I have in Naperville, Illinois, or even what I'm seeing now, in fact, Minnesota, Canada... the "Northern Woods"?it's a welcome break. Instead of Starbucks (which I do love), there are cute coffee cafes that look both cozy and inviting; instead of main drags of multilane highways running past housing developments, narrow little roads dotted with a home here and there curve up in the sleepy hills that hug the main drag of towns like Two Harbors and Grand Marais; instead of suburban sprawl, there are stretches of trees and I'd like to think there are more pines in a square mile in Minnesota than there are total cars in the parking lots of any of the four grocery stores all within a mile of my home in Illinois. All of this is really comforting to me, to know that there can be both wilderness living like this and city/suburban living like that, located only a reasonable 750 miles apart.

It took us a few hours from Duluth to get there, but once we made it past Canadian customs (which really was a quick questioning of where we were going and for how long... I was kind of surprised) and barreled our way through the Canadian countryside (beautiful, and full of green topped rocky cliffs that somehow managed, in my eyes, to roll gracefully around Kings Highway 11), we arrived in Atikokan and immediately made our way to Canoe Canada Outfitters (CCO, for abbreviation's sake). CCO, particularly its co-owner Jim Clark, helped us complete our supply list—canoes, life jackets (as a precaution), maps with markings about current "situations" such as impassable beaver dams and over-camped camp sites, fishing licenses, etc.—before we were to be dropped off at our port of entry to Quetico Park (tomorrow morning, bright and early of course).

The only things left to do on our list was to check into our hotel (the hoppin' White Otter Inn), find a place to eat (The Castle, the licensed restaurant at the White Otter Inn), find some sandwich bread to eat on our trip ("voyageur bread," which turned out to be Canadian Rye?still very good), and then head to the town dump site to partake in the local entertainment: watching bears come and eat their supper of trash (we saw a few, and it was actually entertaining). We got to walk around downtown Atikokan a bit too. There, I met Don, an awesome man who talked with me about who I was and who he was, and of course... the weather! Written down this way, it probably sounds like it was merely small talk and it probably actually was, but 1) there isn't a lot that two people who have just met can talk about in 10 minutes and 2) it was still interesting. Thinking of it, I doubt we would have kept talking for as long as we did if it weren't. He was just so nice, offering to me a more personal experience to Atikokan (especially since that place was really like a ghost town, perhaps even more so because of the civic holiday on Monday). Looking back on my conversation with Don, I only wished I would have asked him one thing: why, though I was in Canada and not really close to the US-Canada border, were there American flags flying right next to, just as high, as Canadian flags on some buildings in town. It really perplexed me. My family and I came up with a few different explanations ranging from the owners were American, to wanting to appear friendly to American tourists and encourage their money be spent there, to that they simply had no qualms about raising American flags. Very strange to me.

Once we got back to the hotel and arranged our packs for the early departure tomorrow, we called it an early night (or at least turned off the TV when the Cubs could in no way, shape, or form come back to win against the Mets). I got the cot again (surprise, surprise), but kept telling myself to enjoy it: for the next week, sleeping in a cot will sound so much better than sleeping on rock. Can't wait... hope we survive. Wilderness—here we come!

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Photos

Gooseberry Falls
State park in Minnesota

Planning the trip at CCO
My mom, Jim Clark, and my dad (left to right)

Family and Jim, outside CCO
We're ready to go!

I felt it necessary to stay afloat, wherever I go
Even in a small grocery store