Surrounded by flowers

We have a flower garden on our campsite leftover from last years hosts.  The poppies have been beautiful and new flowers bloom all the time.  I don't know the names of most of whats come up.  They even had garlic planted.  It shoots up very tall and I guess you dig the bulb up to enjoy it.  I don't want to disturb it so it can come up next year.  There are wildflowers in bloom all over the place with all the rain we've gotten.  Spending time in the west in the summer by this time of year everything is brown so its nice to enjoy green even in late July. 

The mosquitoes have been ferocious along with every kind of fly.  Bug spray is our top seller in the little store we have.  I want to go pick raspberries -- there is a field of them and they taste great but unless there is a nice breeze you get eaten alive trying to pick them.  I learned about another edible berry here.  It is a type of service berry.  Here they call them June berries.  They are good but have a large seed.  We haven't seen any blueberries or blackberries.  You would think we would see bear activity around with all the berries but we haven't had any bear sightings. 

Our New Toy

We sold our boat and bought this Polaris Ranger.  The boat sold in one day.  I have to say Craig's List worked very well for us.  We got texts from guys that were interested in it almost as soon as it was posted online.  We pretty much got our asking price.  We had the boat priced according to the high retail blue book value so that folks would be able to get a loan for it.  That worked out very well with an overwhelming amount of interest from all over the area up here.  We sold it to a nice young family that plan to use it on Lake Vermillion.  They got a good boat and a good deal and we were happy to sell it to a nice family that will take care of it. 

We now have a 4x4 that we can take on roads and trails that we couldn't explore with a big dually truck.  We can't use it in the campground we are in now but that's ok.  The trails around here are very muddy and more for mudding then going for a nice slow ride.  We hope to use it on our way south maybe in the South Dakota.  We  can't wait to use it in Arizona to look for gold.  We are looking for places to go out west next summer where we can use it.  We are giving up walleye fishing and starting a new adventure going gold prospecting.

Another trip up the north shore of Lake Superior.  We went as far north as Grand Marais.  We drove through the campground.  It hasn't been improved -- maybe some taller trees now but that's about it.  The shopping is about the same -- very touristy but the donuts at the "world famous" donut shop are still very good.   It was only in the 50's and windy so we didn't stick around long.  We ate at Cascade restaurant on the shore.  The food is good and the view is nice but the service was a little slow.  We stopped at Cutface Creek rest area and walked the beach in the picture.  Its a great place to rockhound and you might find a Lake Superior agate. 

Well I'm getting ready to change our blog.  We no longer have the boat to tow behind our 5th wheel.  Soon we will have a side by side Polaris ranger and trailer to drag around behind us.   We will be looking for places to gold prospect instead of fishing for walleyes.   We will find out if we should have stuck with fishing.