Day 38 - Orr to Eveleth (T.D.: 88.7km; S.T.: 5h09min)

A beautiful day greeted us when we woke up this morning. Got on the road, corncobs in tow, by about 9am. We had heard that Lake Superior was big enough to create its own weather systems, which seemed plausible; certainly the wind was confused about which way it should be blowing -- in the prevailing west-to-east direction that it is reputed to follow, or in an east-to-west direction off the big lake they call Gitche Gumee. We couldn’t get a read on it, as it seemed to follow no trajectory at all, but just blow willy- nilly in an every-which-way sort of manner. This was fine, if unpredictable. We stopped to fill up our water bottles at a church-turned-gift-shop (I’m not sure what that says about the economy in the States, but probably something), and ended up staying for pie. We tried the “French silk” variety that is a bit of a signature dish in these parts (turns out it is like a big candy bar in pie form - not quite as classy as the name “French silk” might imply).

Had a picnic lunch sometime later in a big wind farm field, where Caroline tried in vain to consume an entire bag of Cheddar Sour Cream-flavoured Ripple Chips.

After wrestling the bag away from her, we made pretty good time to Eveleth, but there got confused about where the campground was, and ended up wasting a bit of energy trying to figure out where it was. The cost of this detour was felt primarily on a small but incredibly steep hill we had to climb in town, only to have to turn around in the end to reach the campground.

We made a delicious campground dinner here, including the fresh corn, and settled down for a very windy night in the tent.


Thought a bit about Bob Dylan, who was born and grew up in nearby Hibbing - (we had thought about making the pilgrimage, but nixed the idea when we heard there isn’t much there by way of commemoration). I figure that traveling this north country fair (where the winds hit heavy on the borderline), is probably commemoration enough.




Stats:
Avg. Spd.: 17.4km/h
Mx. Spd.: 42.7km/h
Most terrifying wildlife sighting: A turkey vulture eating a dead deer! I’ve never seen a turkey vulture before, but they are HUGE. Like, the size of a small bear. A small, ugly bear with a wing-span like a pterodactyl.