Erik Simula has updated the journal of his 1000 mile birchbark canoe trip. New blog and photos at: http://arrowheadjourney.wordpress.com/
Behold the lilies of the field…
Prairie lilies. Photo by John Finnegan.
… And the lupines of the field. As well as the daises and the yellow hawkweed of the field. And all the other magnificent wildflowers on the Gunflint Trail this year.
Lupines by the Main Lodge. Photo by John Finnegan.
Daisies and Yellow Hawkweed. Photo by John Finnegan.
Maybe it was the snowy winter. Perhaps it was the late spring. One could even make a case for it being the rainy spring in 2008. Whatever the reason, the wildflowers this year are magnificent, possibly the best in a decade according to some Bearskin guests. Every roadside, every grassy hill, every sunny spot is covered this year with dazzling color. All the flowers seem to be blooming at once, instead of over an extended time period, and they are extraordinarily numerous. Bearskin is always beautiful, but this year’s vibrant color makes it even more so.
Thanks to John Finnegan for his exceptional photos.
Big fish!
Big brother is holding the fish, but little sister caught it.Bearskin continues its tradition, started last year, of “girls rule” when it comes to catching big fish.
Meredithe really didn’t even want to go fishing today. She caught the fish on her new PINK fishing rod.
Photo contributed by the Ester family.
(Read previous posts http://bearskin.wordpress.com/2008/07/17/dear-bearskin/
and http://bearskin.wordpress.com/2008/07/14/catching-up-with-summer/ from last year to see what we mean about girl’s fishing luck at Bearskin.)
A Moose Story in Pictures
Moose on the loose at Bearskin Lodge. Photo by John Finnegan.
Visit our Flickr photo page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/bearskinlodge/ and click on the icion for “A Moose Story” for a photo story of the frenzy a visiting moose created at Bearskin on Monday.
Pie Plans for Summer 2009
Last year Bearskin experimented with selling home-baked pies, both as full pies and by the slice. Years ago Bearskin sold pies created by Chef Sally, but after Sally retired the pie baking at Bearskin ended. We happened to have an excellent baker on our housekeeping staff last summer who wanted to try creating pies for Bearskin. It was a big success.
This year we don’t have anyone on staff who loves to bake. We all love to eat, yes, but bake…well, not so much. Fortunately, Bearskin found a wonderful artisan baker to continue the pie tradition.
Lesley Gradek baking bread in her wood-fired oven in Grand Marais.
Lesley Gradek comes from a long line of home bakers, starting as a girl learning from her great grandmother, grandmother, and mother while growing up in New Zealand. To this day Lesley still shares ideas and recipes with her mother. Now an American citizen and permanent resident of Grand Marais with her husband George, she bakes her delicious Artisan breads and pies in her wood-fired brick oven.
Lesley makes a variety of pies including apple, blueberry, fruits of the forest, strawberry/rhubarb, and bumbleberry. She also offers several “no sugar added” varieties on special order. Lesley takes great care in ordering her pie ingredients. She uses natural ingredients for her pies and is proud to create products with no preservatives or artificial fillers.
We ravenously enjoyed devouring Bearskin’s pies last year, but they did contain a great deal of sugar. (OK, we admit it — we are suckers for a sugary pie!) The pies had a unique, sweet tasty crust but our pies were also very hard to slice evenly without the pie crumbling.
Lesley’s pie are quite different . We taste-tested them with a group of staff members and we all had a very similar reaction: We were impressed that we could taste the fruit much more than the sugar. We thought there was just the right amount of sugar to enhance the fruit flavor, not mask it. Lesley’s pies taste healthy. The pies slice nicely into firm pieces that hold together well, so it will be a bit easier for a family to share a pie without any quarrels over who has to eat the pie pile rather than the pie slice.
The first pies will be available Wednesday evening this week. That will continue to be the pie schedule. Pies are new enough for us that we really aren’t sure how many Lesley should make each week. Last year for awhile we couldn’t keep up. If you know that you’ll want a pie on a certain date, call or e-mail us to put in an order before Wednesday each week — then she’ll be sure to bake the pie you want.
Lesley will also be creating the homemade bread that we leave in cabins during the summer for guests who are here for a week. That should start shortly. The bread we chose is a delicious breakfast bread. We think you’ll enjoy it very much.
Meet the Bearskin Staff 2009
Andy has worked at Bearskin for nearly 2 years and is often the person you reach when you call us. His family has a long history in the area, formerly owning Hungry Jack Outfitters and Dreamcatcher B&B. If you look carefully in the Taste of Gunflint cookbook, you can find a picture of young Andy. Andy is very knowledgeable about the Gunflint Trail.
Quinn is the son of Bearskin owners Bob & Sue. He works at Bearskin full-time, except for in April – early June, when he leaves Bearskin to coach the St. Cloud Cathedral Ultimate Frisbee team. Ask him which girls’ team won the Minnesota State High School Ultimate Championship this June. Quinn is an obsessed canoeist.
Laura came to Bearskin from Ft. Meade, FL. Her sister Adde worked here previously. Laura was planning to return to Florida this summer to participate in an Orange County Future Deputy program, but stayed at Bearskin a little longer to give us a hand. We are working on making her a permanent Minnesota girl.
Mary, our naturalist, is a graduate of Bemidji State University, and just finished her 5thyear teaching first grade. She was a camp counselor at Camp Roundelay for 8 years and a trip director for 2 of those years. She is ACA Kayak Certified, is a Wilderness Responder, and is a certified lifeguard. Mary loves to kayak.
Brandon has family roots in the Tofte area and is a graduate of UMD. He spent last year teaching English in Korea. Brandon is passionate about helping others and is focused on eventually heading to a third world country to live and work, possibly to Bangladesh. Like Mary, Brandon is a kayaker.
Kate has returned to Bearskin for her second year. She is from Pennsylvania and is a 2009 graduate of Columbia University in New York. Last year Kate was part of a duo who won the women’s event at the Gunflint Trail Canoe Races. This was before she actually became an experienced paddler. Watch out this year!
Caitlin is from Manchester, NH and is a 2009 graduate of Mt. Holyoke College, where she was editor of the college newspaper. She is rethinking whether she wants to be a journalist and is considering a future in anthropology. If either of these areas are in your field of expertise, give her some good advice.
Megan is a 2009 graduate of Columbia University and is also from Manchester, NH. This is her first trip ever to the Midwest, but she’ll be here for awhile. Megan has a full running scholarship to attend grad school this fall at Iowa , studying public health. While she’s in Minnesota, we all need to properly initiate her into the Minnesota -vs.- Iowa feud.
Curtis, our fishing guide, was taught to fish by his father, Mike Berg, the owner/ operator of Seagull Fishing Camp. Curtis has been fishing area lakes almost all his life. He’s been successfully guiding on Sag, Seagull and Northern Lights Lakes for the past 5 years. Curtis would love to talk to you about fishing.
Erik Simula, Bearskin’s winter musher, is off on his 1000 mile birch bark canoe Arrowhead Journey, but he’ll be back for a “Welcome Home” party here at Bearskin in August. One of Erik’s birch bark canoes is hanging inside the Main Lodge. Be sure to look at the small size and the delicate construction of this canoe and then imagine paddling one just like it down Lake Superior, then northward on rocky rivers. Follow Erik’s journey on the Arrowhead Journey blog.
New posts from Erik Simula on Arrowhead Journey
Erik Simula’s 1000 mile birch bark canoe journey across the Arrowhead continues. The most recent leg of his journey was hard on the birch bark canoe. He had one very close call when he felt fortunate that the canoe did not split in half. According to Erik’s father, Vern, the bottom of the canoe now has some serious splits. We have two more of Erik’s birch bark canoes here at Bearskin. We are wondering if perhaps at some point Erik will have to substitue another canoe.
Pages from Erik's journal
Erik has not been able to reach a computer, so he mailed us pages from his journal to post on Arrowhead Journey.
According to local historian Larry Luukkonen, author of Between the Waters, the last officially recorded excursion to complete the Northwest Trail (Lake Superior to Mississippi River via Savanna Portage) in a birch bark canoe was made in 1878 by Minnesota State Geologist Newton H. Winchell, 131 years ago. Very few others have traveled this route since that time. That’s apparent when you read Erik’s journal — this has not been an easily passable route.
"Shiver Camp" on grass hummocks, after an almost all night paddle to escape a campsite inhabited by a cougar and a bear.
Summer plans — restaurant opening June 17th
I’m looking out the window at an absolutely gorgeous day. Clear blue skies with the tiniest white fluffs of clouds; loons on the lake; fresh young leaves on the birches that give the trees the appearance of being vivid green puffballs from afar. Cool nights have meant that we continue to be fairly bug-free. Fishing is still good. Summer has the potential to be wonderful.
It’s very quiet now (which means it’s a great time to visit!), but we’re gearing up for the active summer season. Our seasonal staff is gradually arriving, so it’s starting to feel busier.
On June 17th Chez Jude will reopen the restaurant at Bearskin. We’re excited about the summer dining. Wednesday will feature Judi’s signature Chef’s Tasting Menu, an elegant three course meal. This is fine dining in a casual atmosphere. Don’t worry about “dressing for dinner.”
Thursday is pizza night, featuring a three course Tuscan pan pizza menu with
Chez Jude crafted sauces, pizza dough & seasonal fresh toppings. Choose from 2 sizes and 3 flavors. This is an all inclusive meal for 4 or 6 people, and includes salad and desert for everyone. You can do “take-out” to your cabin or eat it in the lodge. One of the lodge’s under-utilized secret spots is the screened porch off the dining room. We don’t know why more people don’t use this lovely porch, but it would be a perfect place to share a pizza. Don’t forget to order beer, wine or pop from Bearskin’s extensive beverage list to accompany your Tuscan pizza.
Friday is family BBQ ribs night, a three course BBQ ribs menu featuring a 1/2 rack of Chez Jude applewood smoked meaty St. Louis Ribs. A kids’ menu is also available. We thought Friday was a good night for family dining, since so many people check out on Saturday. It might be a bit easier to get organized to leave without cooking a meal the night before.
The Bearskin restaurant is small, so we can’t always promise we’ll have room for everyone who wants to dine during the busy season. We encourage you to call and reseve your dining spots early.
More info about dining at Bearskin can be found at: http://www.bearskin.com/ChezJude/dining.html
Bearskin Fishing — new guide!
Our new fishing guide, Curtis Blake.
So far, this is a very good fishing year. It’s been a cool start to the season, with many folks saying we’re 2 weeks behind the normal fishing schedule. That just means that the easy fishing season could extend farther into the summer.
This year Bearskin has a great new fishing guide, Curtis Blake. Curtis has lived on the Gunflint Trail for 20 years, where he was taught to fish by his father, Mike Berg, the owner/operator of Seagull Fishing Camp. Curtis has been fishing area lakes almost all his life. He’s been successfully guiding on Sag, Seagull and Northern Lights Lakes for the past 5 years. Curtis is knowledgeable, articulate and helpful.
![Curtis_Hawg_004[1]](http://bearskin.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/curtis_hawg_0041.jpg?w=200&h=300 "Curtis_Hawg_004[1]")
If you haven’t hired a guide before on a Bearskin visit, this might be a great year to do so. The fishing has been excellent, if you know where to find them and what to use on this lake. Many guests hire the guide when they first get to Bearskin so they can find out right away where the fish are hiding, then continue to use that knowledge all week on their own.
Our rates for guided fishing trips can be found at here. If you think you’ll want a guided trip with Curtis, call our front desk to schedule it now so you’re sure to get the times and dates that you want.
Moose viewing reports
Here is the picture I wanted to post in the Bearskin Blog: a picture taken on the point between the north and south arms of East Bearskin Lake of a moose cow nursing her two newborn calves. It definitely would have been possible to take this photo, because a number of people observed this scene yesterday afternoon. Handegards, who visit here twice every summer and know the lake well, saw the moose family a couple times and told us to head down the lake with a camera. Of course, by the time we arrived the new mother had moved. That was because Bob was along.
For as long as we’ve been up here, whenever we venture out anywhere Bob says, “I’d really like to see a moose today. Or a bear.” He says that virtually every time, without fail. The one certain truth in life is that Bob never sees a moose. Or a bear. It is guaranteed that if Bob is along, there will be no animal sightings. It’s a gift he has.
Moose family on Gunflint Trail, by Swamper, on a previous Memorial Day weekend.
Which is too bad, because everyone else is seeing animals like crazy. Moose, bear, wolf and fox sightings in this area of the Gunflint Trail are very common year ’round, but there’s probably no better time than late May and early June to find one of these creatures out in the open, practically posing for photos.
It’s an especially good time of year to spot gangly young moose, usually acting a bit dazed, confused and lonely. Moose teenagers get the boot before new babies come along and for awhile, it’s hard to be them. They don’t have a clue how to be a proper moose yet, so they stand in the middle of roadways and paths longingly eyeing people and cars and who knows what else in hopes that one of them will turn out to be mama. That never really works out too well. Eventually they seem to figure out that trying to survive by licking the road and yearning for mother isn’t going to cut it, but until they wise up it makes for pretty good moose viewing in the area.
We’re hearing reports of several of these befuddled adolescents nearby now. Maybe we’ll get lucky and get a photo — as long as Bob doesn’t come along.
There's a moose in there somewhere. Moose spotted by Quinn & Bob (yes, Bob!) Sunday afternoon.
Nice fish!
Bob Marotz, of Phoenix, Arizona, caught this nice bass off a dock while using a leech as bait, but we promised not to say which dock. It’s the new secret spot. And it’s not the dock where he took the photo, we’ll give you that much of a clue.
Such a beautiful day!
A gorgeous day on East Bearskin Lake
We waited unusually long this year for spring to appear. Each time we had a glimmer of hope that winter would finally loosen its grip, spring dreams were dashed by unexpected, unappreciated small snow squalls. Even yesterday, the 16th of May for heavens sake, small pellets of styrofoam-like snow pummeled us periodically all day.
But today is the day we’ve been waiting for, sunny and gorgeous. The water is sparkling, the sky is clear blue, the birds are singing. Loons have been calling and the Golden-Eye ducks are preoccupied with all sorts of splashing, fluttering, swooping interactions. Ravens are sitting atop trees calling to each other and noisy hawks are building nests back in the woods. Moose are posing for hikers on the paths, unperturbed and fairly disinterested in the excitement their appearance is generating in the onlookers.
Out on the lake a fishing party periodically trolls slowly past the lodge. Quiet canoeists have been heading into the BWCA for day trips and over-nighters. It’s the kind of calm day on the water that makes canoeing easy and pleasurable.
The fishing has been great. One guy told us he was actually having trouble getting fish that were small enough for him to keep. One of the “secret” simple fishing spots at Bearskin, the Cabin 6 dock, has yielded yet another big catch to a guest who’d read last year’s Cabin 6 fish story and decided to try the same thing.
We have guests right now from as far away as Arizona and Vermont. Yesterday, when the clouds were pelting us with ice balls, when the wicked wind was knocking over trees, when everyone arrived at the lodge in parkas and woolly hats, I spent the day apologizing for Minnesota weather. Today is Minnesota at its finest. It just doesn’t get any better than this.
Boats by the dock
After the trip is over, it will be one of the “good parts” of retelling the story…..
Photo from Duluth News Tribune by Steve Kuchera / skuchera@duluthnews.com
Many Bearskin Lodge guests who read this blog also frequently follow Erik Simula’s Arrowhead Journey online. Erik created the winter mushing program at Bearskin Lodge, which was a huge success last winter, primarily because Erik is so articulate and interesting. Summer Bearskin guests may have met Erik in his role as a Grand Portage National Monument park ranger, demonstrating the skill of building birch bark canoes for hundreds of visitors every year.
Long story short, Erik and his dog Kitigan ran into a little adventure on the journey going through Duluth. Links to the Duluth News Tribune articles, as well as a variety of blogs commenting on the story, can be found at Arrowhead Journey.
We have two of Erik’s birch bark canoes at Bearskin now, one hanging in the Lodge so you can see its delicate construction and another that will be available for guests to paddle this summer. (But you’ll be paddling on the bay of East Bearskin, not on Lake Superior!)
Erik’s canoes are beautiful works of art. History has established that a birch bark canoe is a sturdy mode of transportation. But when you’re just standing in the lodge under Erik’s canoe, peering at the sections of bark held together with pine pitch over a wooden frame, not many of us would be inspired to think, “I feel a strong need to paddle this 13 foot chunk of seamed-together bark down the world’s biggest freshwater lake, then against the current on raging, rock-filled rivers for 1000 miles.”
Erik’s journey is amazing. For most of us, a little paddle around the East Bearskin Lake bay will be enough of an exciting birch bark canoe adventure.
A season of spring chores, packed into one day
Our ice went out yesterday. This morning we awoke to the sounds of loons on the lake. There have also been several varieties of ducks on the bay today. It didn’t take the waterfowl long to swoop into the lake once the ice disappeared.
Andy and Bob worked nonstop today on tasks that could only be done after ice-out. With the fishing opener coming up this weekend, they had 2 days of ice-free conditions to do an entire spring’s worth of preparation. Fishing boats are now in the water and docks are being reattached. They are placing ramps over lake paths that are temporarily flooded from the melt-water and they’re cleaning up the debris that came ashore after the ice melted.
The choice job of the day was fishing the old wooden broomball box out of the lake. The box escaped detection when the other ice rink equipment was removed, and has been taunting us out on the thin ice ever since. As the ice started to move yesterday, the box sneaked around the bay on its personal ice flow, periodically appearing on the webcam splayed open to flaunt its remaining collection of broomball sticks. This morning the first thing I saw out our window was the gaping box floating right outside the lodge. In just a few minutes it had traveled on its merry way and was completely gone. Bob and Andy finally rescued it down by the lodge docks, ending an exceptionally long season for the broomball supplies.
Bob went for the first swim of the year this morning. Not intentionally. The ice may finally be out of East Bearskin Lake, but Bob can attest that swimming season hasn’t arrived yet.
“Did I just see the ice go out?”
Somebody called around lunch time today to ask, “Did I just see the ice go out on on the webcam?”
Yes, indeed, that is exactly what he saw. Just like last year, it was as if the ice suddenly decided to march eastward down the lake. A little before noon, the ice began rapidly moving past the the lodge, carrying with it remnants of this winter’s history — a broken tipi pole, bits of dog bedding straw, a mysterious log that had been lodged in the ice, an escaped broomball stick. By early afternoon, as far as we could see into the distance on East Bearskin Lake it was totally clear of ice.
No doubt there are still some piles of ice on the BWCA end of the lake; the wind could change and send ice charging back to this end of the lake. Last year an ice flow made a return visit shortly after Bob and Andy had secured the main dock in its correct position, crashing into the dock and causing aggravating problems.
Tonight Bob and I sat outside on the lodge deck eating ice cream, watching the mist rise from a totally calm lake and listening to the frogs chirp all around us. Last night, we heard only the sounds of rain falling on crackling ice. Tonight, we are surrounded by the definitive songs of spring.
There’s the scent of a new season outside. For me, winter doesn’t trigger many aromatic connections – maybe I identify the odor of a wood-burning fire or of a balsam tree with winter, but overall my winter memories are devoid of olfactory associations. You don’t “catch a whiff” of winter. But spring is an aromatic extravaganza, a sudden reminder that that yes, we do have a sense called “smell.” This afternoon Bearskin had the fragrance of “just rained” mixed with the scents of pine needles and moss and moist earth. It felt restorative to smell the outside again.
Spring has finally arrived at Bearskin Lodge. It’s about time.
