As we paddle away from the RV "campground" we heard a "Bon Voyage!" yelled at us from shore. It was Jim. Thanks Jim.
We arrived at the next portage spot, Blandin Paper Company, and couldn't quite tell where the portage was. We could see the dam and we knew we had to go to the right, but all we could see were houses. We didn't want to pull up in somebody's backyard and unpack all our gear. We saw a man riding a peddle catamaran and he pointed us to somebody's backyard with a sign posted. Turns out it was his backyard and the sign posted was the portage route. The man peddled up to the shore with us, got out, and started chatting with us. His name was Frank. Frank's house has waterfront property, but technically the city and Blandin own the shoreline so he gets some of the benefits of being right on the water (like owning awesome peddle catamarans) without paying waterfront property taxes. His backyard is technically a street, but it's grass. On the map it's even labeled as a street. It was weird, but all I know is I'm happy that Frank is the one living there. He almost immediately offered us coffee, which I gladly accepted, and then chatted a little bit with us about our trip. He then let us leave our stuff on his lawn while we went into town to visit the library, get food, and groceries.
When we got back there was a boy about 12 years old fishing. His name was Peyton and he LOVED fishing. It was also pretty apparent he was a big fan of Frank. "Hey Frank, can I use a minnow? Hey Frank, remember that time you caught that big northern? Hey Frank, I lost a lure." Frank complied with most of his wishes and nodded patiently. Peyton was a much better fisherman than me. He caught two northerns in the short time we stayed to chat.
The reason the portage was hard to find, we later learned from Frank, was that most people don't use it. There was a sign at the last dam that we half read that talked about a shuttle service from that dam to the other side of the Blandin dam. The shuttle service skips 3-4 miles of beautiful river and one beautiful man's house. Even if we would have read it fully I don't think we would have taken advantage of it. After all, you can't really say you paddled the entire Mississippi if you skip 3-4 miles right? Frank did offer to drive our stuff over to the put in, but completely understood that we wanted "the experience," as he called it, of doing as much of this trip as possible without motor transportation. It was a pretty long portage but absolutely worth it. On our last trip of hauling stuff to the put in we said goodbye to Frank and thanked him for letting us leave our stuff there. Peyton then caught another fish. Way to rub it in kid.
We only paddled 20 miles today. It was a gorgeous day. The sun was shining, there was very little wind, and the paddling just seemed easy. We got to camp and realized someone really cares about the campsite we were at. There was a wood rack with a shingled roof, a bench made of of logs, and a bear proof locker. The bear proof locker worried Anders. He thinks that's a sign that bears come. Inside the locker was a note from the future. It said, "Thank you- Doug somethingorother" and was dated 5-24-14. Today is 5-23-14. I wish I could ask Future Doug about the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment