Day 6

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Obfuscator writes: We departed from D’s home in Minneapolis and took a drive northward. Many thanks are due to D for his generosity in putting us up for a few days, and showing us around, as well as to R (female Cousin) for her delicious cookies. At Lake Mille Lacs we hit a really nice scenic route along the lake for some time. There’s a really cool rock pile island in the lake, but we could only see it from quite a distance. Evidently there’s some colorful local stories about the Natives and their beliefs about the Island. We also saw Eddie’s, a place our great grandfather took our dad and uncle when they were little. It’s sort of a boat rental place on the lake, with nice big fishing boats and stuff.

After that, we met up with Dad and his friend, C. C’s family has a cabin near Aitkin that we were visiting. We stopped at a little town called Cuyuna, and visited the Woodtick Inn, where they race wood ticks from time to time. Cuyuna is basically a ghost town. Once it was near active and profitable mines. Now it’s just a little place on the way to somewhere else. Nevertheless, the Woodtick Inn seemed to have a pretty good gimmick going for it.

Between the Woodtick and the cabin, we went to the Portsmouth Mine, near Crosby, MN. The Mine is now abandoned and entirely filled with water, making it an incredibly deep lake. In the 50’s it also played an important role in the early space race. The government launched at least one high altitude manned balloon test flight from the bottom of the mine, where the balloon was protected from winds. It was very educational and interesting, since I had never heard of Manhigh Project, and it was pretty to boot.

Finally, we made it to the cabin on Stark Lake. It’s a beautiful old, but slanty cabin, built by C’s grandfather. Wood everywhere, with a living room and kitchen, and two bedrooms on the first floor, and a large staircase, balcony, and two more large bedrooms upstairs. Unfortunately, the foundation has been settling for many years, so that it needs extensive work now, lest it continue sinking. It also had great lake access. We sat for a while on the dock and saw a couple of loons on the lake, diving for food. I took a lot of pictures of them, though only a few were really worth keeping. We had a nice dinner of kielbasa, sweet corn, salad, and watermelon. Then Onaxthiel and I took C on a little canoe trip around the lake, which was well worth the time. We timed it pretty well on sunset, so it was really pretty, though unfortunately we only had the little 2 MP camera on the canoe itself. I got a couple of decent shots of the sunset with my better camera when we got to shore though. The rest of the night was good and relaxing, despite the discovery of a pretty large and semi disturbing spider in the bathroom.

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Photos

Lake Mille Lacs
Lake Mille Lacs and Spirit Island

Big Fish Head
Big Fish Head - Lake Mille Lacs

Woodtick Inn
Woodtick Inn

Woodtick Racing Rules
Woodtick Racing Rules

Manhigh Project
Manhigh Project

Grasshopper Arm
Grasshopper on my arm. There were millions of them!

The slanty cabin
The slanty cabin

Loons!
Loons!

Stark Lake Sunset
Stark Lake Sunset

Big Spider
Big Spider

Comments

[allen]

ticks
i've actually heard of the tick race! Go Michael Feldman!

[dallas]

stark lake
I love stark lake i go camping there every year at wah bona qwat

[Theresa]

yikes!
That "yikes" is for both the excessively hairy arm picture (the lighting really highlights that rather more than the grasshopper) AND the gigantic spider. I *hate* spiders.