Biwabik

Biwabik is a cute little Iron Range town.  They have this nice town square park with a moose statue which is a little different from most town squares but this is moose country.  It is good to see this town surviving through the mining crisis that hit the area until China stepped in and bought most of the mines.    Now a new mining effort is trying to get going to go after precious minerals -not taconite.  Its controversial because its so close to the Boundary Waters but with proper regulation it should be ok.  The Iron Range needs the jobs -- tourism isn't enough for most of these little towns.

We were hit with a notice that our mail service was closing.  The owner of the service gave all of us (3000 customers) four days notice.  Of course your residency depends on this address.  We will still be South Dakotan's with our new address in Sioux Falls but our insurance premiums went up -- health insurance skyrocketed --even though we only "moved" 30 miles.  Now we will have to get new drivers licenses and new licenses for our vehicles because in South Dakota your license shows what county you live in and we are changing counties.  UGH!

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. 

Gooseberry Falls

We have been having fun driving around the area on our days off.  Its only an hour to the north shore of Lake Superior from camp.  We checked out Gooseberry Falls which was running good from all the recent rain.  We haven't been on the north shore in at least twenty years.  It was nice to see that it is still a beautiful drive and you can enjoy some of the scenery for free at the rest areas along the highway.  We were disappointed at the campground in Gooseberry.  We didn't stay there just drove through to see some of the campsites.  The loop we drove had dirt for campsites and gravel road to get to them which was muddy from all the rain.  Maybe its nicer once it dries out and maybe they are going to tar the camp roads but I'm not sure it will be better any time soon. 

It is much busier at our campground now with summer in full swing.   People come in to the first come first serve sites at 8:00am although official check in time isn't until 2:00pm.  They don't seem to want to leave by the 1:00 checkout time if the weather is nice.  It makes it difficult to mow and clean sites when they are continually occupied from one minute to the next.  We just do the best we can. 

We Sold Our Boat

We have been thinking about selling the boat and thought while we were up in the heart of good fishing this would be the place to sell it.  We did some very minor repairs and then put it on Craigs list for the Duluth/Superior area listing.  We really thought it would take most of the summer to sell it but were we surprised.  We got immediate responses and one guy came out the same day it listed with money in his pocket but the offer was a little low.  By the next morning we had several very interested buyers. We sold it to a nice young couple with a cute little family.  They offered almost our full asking price which was great so we took it.  We had at least a dozen inquiries and several good offers but we went with the highest.  I had to text everyone that wanted to come see it and let them know it was sold.  One guy was very bummed because he was at the bank getting money when I told him it already sold.

We think we had it priced right at the highest retail price in the NADA listing.  It was in excellent condition and loaded with extras.   What we were hearing was it was hard to find a boat like ours in good shape.  Now we are thinking about getting a side by side 4 wheeler  that we can use in the desert and mountains. 

Foggy

After a very busy Memorial weekend we enjoyed our days off by taking a drive.  We had hoped to go fishing but the weather turned ugly.   So we decided to do some exploring of the area.  We went up to Virginia to do laundry, shopping and went out for lunch.  It was amazing to see that highway 53 had been redone and was all finished.  They had to move the road so they could mine under the old road.  It was only two years ago that they were going to start and now it is completely done and beautiful. 

We also went for a drive to Two Harbors on the shore of Lake Superior.  We are only about an hour a way from there and the road is very good all the way.  We got to Two Harbors and went to see the lighthouse.  Of course as soon as we got there the fog started to roll in so my pictures are very good.  I also took a picture of Lake Superior where you could see the line of heavy fog coming in to shore.  We didn't want to drive in pea soup fog so we got the heck out of there.  We hope to fish on our next days off.