Ely MN!!

Dear Hannah!

I know it’s been a few days, sorry no excuses!! I’m trying the remember where I left off. I think I was still in Turtle River ND. I really enjoyed the place! A little oasis of trees and woods in the middle of farm country.

So… sorry, was out fishing. It’s about 1500 on 9/17.

But back to the story..:I loaded up at a turtles pace and was in the road to MN someplace. It’s like… Friday and I needed to be in ELY by Sunday so you can see my spacious timeline👍.

My first stop was Spring Lake, Lengby MN. This was the place learned to swim, fish, swing from a rope swing and land in the lake (usually) and row a rowboat and stuff. We used to park a little camper, back when there was a little campground. There still a park where the park once was and it’s still a nice little lake, just littler than I remembered. Back then that diving board was 30 feet higher, I’m sure!

I had the find a home for the next few days so I set my sites on an area NE of Bemidgi that had some state land camping and tons of little lakes.

I found Bass Lake ( I’m sure there are many).

Great spot on a nice little lake!! It rained a lot here but the water was flat calm and the fishing was good. There’s a reason I don’t have any fish pics. When your in a canoe with a fishing pole in one hand, landing net in one hand, and a paddle in one hand, the last thing you need to be worrying about is the phone falling in the lake. Mine was in the truck.

I did bring it along for an evening paddle!

Like I think I mentioned, I stayed here for 2 nights. Great spot but a very damp camp. The almost constant drizzle and thick tree cover left everything clammy. Both evenings had real rain showers but the second night it Rained and stormed all night. A “gully washer” as they say! Big winds and almost constant lightning for about 5 hours. Luckily i had everything packed and the vehicles hitched and ready for the morning. At one point a wind came through, sounded like a freight train, and ripped my heavy duty over engineered rain fly system completely out of the ground and threw the poles over the camper. I spent enough time securing everything to be soaked. The rest of the night was kind of sucky!!

Next morning, straight to Ely with only a coffee stop on the way! As a matter of fact, I’m in Ely right now… more on that later… gotta go fishing