Please note that the Clearwater Lodge is now under new ownership, and they are really great to work with.
I woke up rather late and didn’t feel very good. The rigors of the trail had taken a toll on my body. I ached all over. And all the tick and biting fly bites over the course of the last week had me feeling very itchy. After looking at the maps and thinking about it for a while, I decided that I didn’t want to do the rest of the Border Route. I figured it was a 45 mile backpacking hike from Clearwater Lodge to Hovland. I knew that about 25 miles from the Clearwater Lodge, the Border Route crosses the Arrowhead Trail. And at the Arrowhead Trail there is a forest campground. But there is no assurance that there would be anybody camping at that campground. And there is no assurance that anyone would be traveling on the Arrowhead Trail, because it is a very remote road.
Hovland would be the only sure destination where there are people and businesses. And I really didn’t want to risk going that far in my now run down condition. Plus I didn’t want to hike out to the Border Route on the Daneils Lake Access Trail, which I know has major wet areas. And what if the Border Route has a lot of obstructions like I’d seen on other parts of the trail. So I decided I would do something different. I would catch a ride into Grand Marais, then I would hike the Superior Hiking Trail south. At least on the Superior Hiking Trail there would be a town or state park every 8 miles or so. And I would be close to the well-traveled Highway 61 that runs up the coast of Lake Superior.
I hiked down to the Clearwater Lodge. It is a really old log building that looked really well maintained. The rest of the facilities looked rather run down. They had a rather beat up van that they must have used to carry people and canoes to boat landings. Clearly this was not as nice as the Gunflint Lodge. The one thing I noticed was there didn’t seem to be any customers around. I went in and talked to the woman in the Lodge. The Lodge looked as though it had a dining area, so I asked the lady if the were serving breakfast. She said no. She also said that I owed $5 postage on the package I sent. And she didn’t seem very happy about it. It seemed as though she thought that I was intentionally trying to short change her. I didn’t bother telling her that the people at the Gunflint Lodge had figured out the postage, not me.
Then I asked her if there was any way I could get a ride into Grand Marais today. She said she wasn’t planning on going into town. I asked if there was anybody coming in off the lake today that could maybe take me into town, and she said no. Boy, I thought, I must be their only customer right now. Then she started asking me a bunch of questions like an inquisition. She asked me if I had a contact that could come and pick me up, and I said no. She asked me how I was originally planning on getting into Grand Marais. I said I was planning on hiking the Border Route and the Superior Hiking Trail to get there, but I wasn’t feeling that great so I wanted to stop my backpacking trip. She said there was another person earlier in the week that did the same thing. That wasn’t exactly comforting. She made it sound as though it was some type of epidemic.
Then she said they would take me into town for $80. Wow, I thought, I wasn’t expecting it to be anywhere close to that much. I thought about it for a minute. At this point all I wanted to do was get the heck out of there. So I agreed. I said it would take me a while to get packed up. I paid all my bills and headed back to the screen hut to pack up. About a half hour later one of the college students came and checked if I was ready. Then he drove me into town.
As we went into town, he told me that the forest service had to haul someone out of the Boundary Waters the week before. The guy had rented a canoe from Clearwater Lodge and then he didn’t show up at the pick up point. They checked the next day and he wasn’t there again. Then they called the Forest Service to go find him. The guy had suffered a pinched nerve in his back. He was still trying to get to the pick up point, but he was going really slow. At any rate the Forest Service found him and helped him get out. All of a sudden I was feeling a little better about paying the $80 to get into town.
I also thought that the Gunflint Lodge had given me excellent service, where I thought the Clearwater Lodge didn’t. Maybe that’s why the Gunflint Lodge had customers in the middle of the week, where the Clearwater Lodge didn’t have customers even on the weekend.
The college student dropped me off at the Best Western in Grand Marais. I had done my research ahead of time, and knew that the Best Western had a computer for guests to use and they also had a complimentary breakfast in the morning. I check into a really nice room, immediately took a bath and had a nap.
After the nap, I went out of the hotel and put the beacon out. The Best Western is right on the shore of Lake Superior, and they have a nice walkway out by the lake. I saw a couple lounging around on the shoreline. It looked as though they had backpacks, so I went over and talked with them. They were David and Rachel, and they just had backpacked from Cascade State Park to Grand Marais. I told them about my tough going on the Border Route and asked them about the conditions on the Superior Hiking Trail. They said the trail was good with only a couple downed trees. I was really happy with their report.
After the beacon sent its message. I went out and started exploring Grand Marais. It’s a quaint little tourist town that’s not too overdone like many other tourist towns. They had several northwoods style murals on buildings around town. I took a photo of every mural I seen. The town has a nice harbor area with a cute little coast guard station in the harbor. It was very scenic. I should have been looking for a sleeping bag cover as I visited the shops, but that didn’t occur to me. Instead I was looking for some cheap clothes that I could wear when I did my laundry. I found a little thrift shop that was run by some church ladies. They were even having a sale on men’s clothes. So I got a pair of pants and a “Phish” T shirt for a grand total of $4. I stopped at the Dairy Queen across the street from the thrift store. It was a vanilla only DQ, so I had a vanilla cone dipped in chocolate. I went back to the Hotel and did my laundry.
When I was doing my laundry, I finally realized that I should get a sleeping bag cover. But it was 5:30 pm and the Hotel clerk called two stores to see if they were still open. Jones Department Store was closed and was not open on Sunday. The Lake Superior Trading Post was closed too, but the owner answered the phone and offered to help me even though they were closed. I asked him what time they opened in the morning, and he said 9 am so I said I would come to the store then. I thought it was good of him to offer to help me after hours, and was amazed that they opened at 9 am on a Sunday, I was expecting it to open around noon.
While I was doing my laundry, I was also working on the hotel’s computer doing some updates to my isawtman website. Finally I finished my laundry and was starting to get a little hungry. I asked the Hotel Clerk to recommend someplace to eat. She recommended a couple places but said they would be closing in an hour. I said I wanted to go to someplace that stayed open later, so I asked her if there was a bar around that served good food. She recommended the Gunflint Tavern and said they would be having some entertainment down there too.
So I took a leisurely stroll, during the last light of the day, down to the Gunflint Tavern. I walked in and noticed the bar was an L shaped room with a folksy band playing in the corner of the L. I found a barstool with a good view of the band, and asked the bartender for a menu and a local brew. She served me up a Schell’s. This time I avoided the hamburger and ordered the Salmon.
The band was called Tres Amigos. It consisted of an electric guitarist, an acoustic guitarist and a fiddle player. They are a very good group. What I liked about them is that they localized the lyrics of some of the songs. They sang Charlie Pride’s “Is anybody going to San Antoine.” During one of the verses they changed the lyrics from “sleeping under a picnic table at a roadside park” to “sleeping under a picnic table at Cascade State Park.” I talked to the fiddle player at the break, and he said they were not very serious about the band. They were three friends that played together a few times a year. At any rate, I thought they were very entertaining.
The Salmon was very good and so was the beer. I decided to splurge on dessert for a hot fudge sunday. I thought it would be in a little bowl and cost around 3 or 4 dollars. Instead, I got this big plate full of ice cream with all the fixings. It was worth the 6 bucks. Overall I had a great time at the Gunflint Tavern. Good food, good beer, good atmosphere, good entertainment and a good dessert, what’s not to like?
I headed back to the Hotel and took a dip in the Hotel’s hot tub. Then I hit the hay. It was a very enjoyable evening.