Monday, August 08, 2011

Lake Superior State Forest

Sunday morning we headed east on road H-58 towards the Lake Superior State Forest campground. Our camping neighbor in Grand Marais is an experienced UP camper and was telling us about how nice it was. They had taken a ride out there on Saturday just to look and the campground was full as expected for a summer weekend. There are only 18 sites to begin with. We hoped that on Sunday afternoon we could get in. The stars must have been in perfect alignment because just as we were pulling in, someone was leaving. We grabbed the only available spot and it was a great one. Very large with a nice path leading to the shoreline, fairly level and the tree cover was thin enough to give us some sun for the solar panels. For the rest of the day, we watched cars slowly cruising through the campground looking at the stickers posted by the campsite listing the date of departure.

The downside was the road getting to the campground. It's about ten miles east of Grand Marais. Our neighbor did advise us that about five miles of the access road was wash-board dirt. He was right. Twice I was ready to turn around but Carol said "We've come this far, no sense turning back now". OK, on we went at perhaps 5 mph on the good parts and less on the bad. I'm so glad we continued. This place is a real treasure. It's on our list of places we'll return to next time we're in the UP.

The water supply here is a hand pump. The campground host has a very simply creation to feed the water from the spout on the pump into his water container. He took a funnel like you might use to pour oil or transmission fluid into a car then attached with a hose clamp a piece of appropriately sized tubing about two feet long. He used a small bungie cord to hold the funnel to the spout while he pumped the water. It worked well, cost little and took up very little space. I'll make one up.

The weather is just perfect. We woke up to 60* this morning. I doubt it reached 80* today.






The close of another perfect day.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow!! What a gem of a park. I am glad Carol insisted you travel on down that road. That made it even better I am sure. Enjoy your time there.