On Wednesday, our last day in Red Lake Falls, we went to
visit one of the town’s oldest residents, 93-yr-old Florence Cyr. She’s a
really nice lady with a sharp mind and a pretty good memory, although muddled
at times which is understandable since I was asking her about people who are
long gone and she hasn’t thought of in ages. I asked her if she
remembered any LaTendresses, and she said “Yes, they’re all dead.”
Jim said, no, not quite….she’s still here (meaning me).
:-D When we got back to the RV and I checked my tree on Ancestry.com I
discovered both she and her late husband are my second cousins. After
thinking about it for a minute I realized I should be related to every Cyr in
town because we all descended from the same two Cyr brothers who were in the
group of original settlers.
The 220 mile drive from Red Lake Falls to International
Falls yesterday was through the lightly populated northern center of Minnesota.
The extreme flatness of the northwest section gave way to rolling hills about
40 miles to the east. It’s still farmland but more broken up by hills and
trees.
We are accustomed to having our own bathroom with us so we
were a little nervous about going 200 non-interstate miles with it not
working. We are usually past the places that have room for us to pull off
before we see them. Just as my eyeballs were starting to float we came
upon the little town of Black Duck which had a very nice wayside park with
restrooms and plenty of room for us. It was much appreciated.
Black Duck wayside park with a lovely memorial garden.
Black Duck, Minnesota
While we were in Red Lake Falls I had located a repair shop
20 miles west of International Falls. We had an appointment at noon to
get our plumbing problems fixed. The GPS couldn’t even find the address
(which is the norm for the places we go) but google maps on the phone led us
right to it. Way out in the country, about ¼ mile down a one lane dirt
road off a less-than-secondary road. We came up to this barn with a
couple of old campers and bunch of tools spread around. We were a little
suspicious but couldn’t turn around and run. The owner turned out to be a
super nice guy and a wizard at fixing RVs. He used to own an RV
dealership but has pared his business down to working out of his barn plus
mobile repairs. The parts he had ordered didn’t come in when they were
supposed to so we had to wait three hours for them to finally show up. At
least we could do it in comfort with the slides out and lunch. As soon as
the parts came in Steve got us fixed up with a fully working bathroom and we
were on our way again. (For John Franklin…..we didn’t need the new gate
valve which we now have on hand, just a replacement cable for the one which got
kinked and broke.) While waiting for the parts he told us stories of
fixing up this 1976 bus (on the side in the picture) since he bought it in
2006. It’s still a work in progress and may be forever. He said
driving it around Lancaster, PA, was the worst with their narrow roads and
sharp turns. He got stuck in a turn with the bus pulling a 12-ft U-Haul
and had to block traffic in both directions while he maneuvered his rig around
to make the turn. After that he rented a car to use while they were in
that area. He’s taken his whole family….all 8 of them…..all over the
country (including Asheville), even spending two winters in Wyoming in it, one
in 22-below weather. That wasn’t intentional but I can’t remember what
happened that forced them to stay there.
Our latest repair shop.
A house which was almost two-lanes wide. Good thing
the road had wide and level shoulders. While trying to pass it Jim drove
down the wrong side of the road for a while before he remembered it was a
two-lane road. :-D He probably would have figured it out if
something had been heading for us.
The road we were supposed to take to get to the campground
was closed. All its pavement had been removed so it was REALLY
closed. The next road the GPS pointed us to had no sign of anything wrong
at the corner but about 300 yards down the road we met all this equipment.
The man from the truck in the picture came back to tell us we really didn’t
want to go down that road, that it was totally closed in about a half mile and
we’d be much better off backing up only 300 yards instead of the whole
way. Jim backed out onto the main highway (with me directing him as to
traffic via our walkie-talkies which are invaluable). The next try was
successful and we got to the campground without further fun and games. We
were not impressed with the lack of road-closed-signs. People pulling
large campers are not happy when they have to back onto a highway.
Fortunately for us International Falls isn’t a busy place.
Our campground is small, tight and full of trees. Our
space is probably the easiest one to get into. The only problem is that
the ground slopes down right where our steps come out, into the wooded strip
between us and the next space. After nearly falling down the slope Jim
now aims for the nearest tree against which he can stop himself.
Today we went on our first boat tour in Voyageur National
Park (first of two, the second will be on Sunday). It was 2 ½ hours on
Rainy Lake through whose middle runs the border with Canada. The lake drains
into the Rainy River which is the border west and north to Lake of the Woods at
the northern tip of Minnesota. The river has been dammed between
International Falls and Fort Frances, its sister city across the river, so the
lake is deeper than it was naturally. Harvesting the wild rice which grew
in shallow sections of the lake was a very important thing for the Ojibwe
people, but it can no longer grow there because of the increased depth.
There were lots of watercraft rushing about……speed boats,
houseboats, jet skis…..and lots of houses, cabins and resorts on the
shoreline. These lakes are heavily used for recreation. The tour
included a stop at Little American Island, the site of Minnesota’s 1893 gold
rush. There are a couple of sites on the island where mining activities
are slightly visible but otherwise there’s no trace. It was a short-lived
event, although the promoter of the mine advertised it as being the richest
gold discovery in the country and perhaps the world. He got a little
ahead of himself. The two men who found it and started things rolling
sold out to a company for $10,000. They were the only ones who made
money. It was so expensive to mine there and transport the ore…..not
counting the bad luck, mismanagement and general screw-ups that occurred (like
a whole load of gold-containing quartz ore falling into the lake when a dock
gave way, and $10,000 in refined gold going into the lake when an employee
wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing), that the whole operation only
made $10,000 in seven years.
Rainy Lake, Minnesota – one of the many little
islands.
A horizontal gold mine shaft. You can go in it
if you want to tie your boat up against these rocks. Not.
Bald eagle youngster in a very large nest, waiting for his
next meal. Bald eagles don’t get their white feathers until they’re
fully mature. We saw several adult bald eagles but I wasn’t able to get a
decent picture of any of them.
The Voyageur – our tour boat on Rainy Lake. By the end
of the tour we finally had blue sky. There’s still a lot of smoke from
the Saskatchewan wildfires so we were lucky it cleared for a bit.
My friend in the visitor center, reading over my
shoulder. The Park Service counted 46 moose on Kabetogama peninsula
(across from the visitor center dock), but they’re shy and reclusive and don’t
come to the shoreline with so many boats around. Needless to say, we
didn’t see any live ones. This fellow was very impressive though.
Part of the logging exhibit in the visitor center.
Logs were all marked with brands so they’d be credited to the right owner at
the mill. The boots have short spikes on the soles which was necessary to
keep log drivers from sliding off into the water.
It was a beautiful day. And we didn’t even get bitten
by any insects!
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