Sunday July 13th/Monday July 14th

Our first moose!




This was our last long hiking day (8 miles) to Windigo. My feet were beat and hurt starting in the morning-it was going to be a long walk, plus it was a cold day. Our very first moose sighting came at 9am Ethan ran up to camp and said there was a bull by the lake drinking. He stood for the camera for about 5 minutes. Once he took off he disappeared into the woods quickly. The last 8 miles only took from 10- 2:30 - of course the boys got in before us again.
When we went to the museum the ranger handed us a bag of food Bill had left in case the boys needed more :) It was a slow day -all of the shelters were open so we didn't need to set up tents.
I spent the day wandering around looking for strawberries but couldn't find any ripe here. This night I saw our 2nd moose - a cow eating weeds in the lake waters.
It turns out moose don
't sleep at night -they were eating all night long in the river that ran in front of the Adirondack shelters. If it wasn't so bloody cold at night I might have gone out to take a look with the flashlight, but nothing, not even 100 moose would have removed me from my sleeping bag. BRRR.

Saturday July 12th

Sherilyn's "My feet are killing and I am not amused" face.






Sun again! We could actually see across Bay and wow-there was actually a peninsula across from us that we didn't see the night before. WE had a late start this morning. I woke them up at 7:15, but they were finally getting out of their sleeping bags at 8:15. So I spent some time picking wild strawberries and hoping the grass would dry before long (it took until noon). Got on the trail around 10 am and had to push our way through a long straight stretch of overgrown trail. It was very easy to twist an ankle since you couldn't see under the 4 foot high weeds and grasses.
The top of Feldtmann Ridge was extremely windy -strong enough gusts to push me off the trail occasionally. By the time we got to Feldtmann Lake campsites I almost couldn't put my feet on the ground-next year I am getting waterproof boots, not just spraying waterproofing on boots. (9.83 miles ) From here we could hear Lake Superior crashing against the shore, so there must have been high waves again. For being July it has been so cold that none of our clothes are drying quickly and our socks are wet. We still haven't sighted a moose ,although some of the boys kept saying they might have seen one far away (right).

Friday July 11th

Here is a picture of the trail (WHAT TRAIL-THE BOYS ASKED!!)





Today was the toughest day yet. It started cold and rainy and we walked 10.6 miles- Our feet killed! At least we got an Adirondack shelter because a huge thunderstorm came in at night. THe kids that didn't bring raingear were frozen when they got to Siskiwit Bay and some crawled into their sleeping bags to warm up for a bit. A bit of fire in the fire pit helped for a while, but we got rained out in about an hour. Sherilyn and I put up a sheet of Tyvek to block the wind in our shelter and hoped the boys wouldn't freeze too badly in the wind in theirs. We went to bed at 6:30 -talk about an early night.
Of course, in between thunderstorms we could hear the boys outside laughing and talking , so they weren't too frozen!