Up North and back in record time

I'm just back from a whirlwind trip Up North with my friend Joey. I'm doing a travel story for the paper (it'll run next summer, but had to be reported now), so we drove up on Wednesday, spent one night in a cabin, and drove back yesterday. A lot of driving for a short amount of time in my favorite place in the world, but so worth it.

We saw many raptors on the drive up--migration season is upon us--and as we hiked along the Cross River in Schroeder we watched a bald eagle fly into the top of a dead birch, where a bunch of crows dive-bombed him.

We were staying in a tiny log cabin, hand-built in 1922, which looked out on Cross River and the waterfall. I had asked for a cabin with two beds, and as we drove up I told Joey, "You take the bed. I'll take the fold-out couch."

"No, no," she said. "I'll take the living room. You take the bedroom."

Heh heh heh. Joke was on us: the cabin was one room. The bed and the fold-out couch were about three feet apart.

Living room? Bedroom? Ha. But oh it was the sweetest, sweetest place.


The waterfall pounded outside our door. Out back was a firepit, with sky-blue adirondack chairs, where we built a bonfire and stared up at the Milky Way, brighter than I've seen it in years.

Earlier in the evening, we walked down to the rocky beach of Lake Superior and sat on sun-warmed rocks and watched two yellow Labs swim out, again and again, after tennis balls.

I could feel the stress just leaking out of my body.

In the morning, we awoke to the sound of the waterfall, the pattering of gentle rain, and the steady cawing of a crow.

Book note: It's in the stores in Duluth! Here I pose for an embarrassing author-finds-her-book-in-a-bookstore-and-pretends-to-be-a-casual-browser photo.