ELY!

The coolest small town in America

Ely is one of our favorite places. It claims to be the coolest small town in America, and it's true. It's a canoe town. If you drive into town without a canoe on top of your car, they ask you how far back it blew off, and offer to help you find it.

Certainly a canoe town

We arrived in Ely about 4:00 on Wednesday and set up camp at Fall Lake Campground, a unit of the Superior National Forest. It's a fantastic campground and a great staging place and jumping off point for entering the Boundary Waters. They have a huge paved parking area with street lights where we can park long-term when we put into the wilderness. It's the only place up here I feel good about leaving the motor home for our two-week stay in the Boundary Waters. Even if we are not putting in near Ely, we will come here and leave the coach.

 


As we drove into the campground we spotted a coyote on the road. When we saw him he was actually pooping in the center of the road. I think this posture slowed him down a bit, so we were able to get a camera out and get a photo from the coach. After getting parked in site #13 we had another wildlife encounter, as it were. I found a dead baby mouse on the floor in the coach. That's never good. Since then we have found three more dead babies. Where's mama? I hope she's abandoned ship.

Not good!!!

We met our friends Wayne and Lynda here. On Friday we did a day paddle on Hegman Lake. It is fairly easy to get to from here and has some nice Indian pictographs. It rained a bit on that paddle. I hope that's not a sign of things to come. Also, all the campsites on the lake were filled. Maybe that's to be expected on an easy entry lake.

Check out the two loons.  I mean the two birds behind Wayne and Lynda!

Indian Pictographs

 



We spent much of our 4 nights here repacking and reorganizing our gear. Today we picked up our permit, bought a fishing license and bought last minute perishables . We will put into the wilderness tomorrow at Mudro Lake for 14 days. During that time we will have no cellular service and no internet, so we will be incommunicado. The 10-day forecast looks pretty good: little chance of rain, light winds, highs near 70 and lows near 50. Not bad.

Bon Voyage!