Doth quoth the DaveM

South Kawishiwi River camping

After our visit to Split Rock Lighthouse, we headed towards Ely, with our eventual goal being Soudan. Our maps showed campgrounds along MN 1, so we figured we'd find a campground along the way.

We didn't see much in the way of campgrounds before Isabella, and then we were sent on a detour through Superior National Forest on dirt/gravel roads. This was significantly slower than MN 1, as going too fast caused us to lose traction, and the roads themselves were pretty narrow. We saw signs on our detour pointing towards camping areas, but the detour eventually led us away from the camping areas and sent us back to MN 1, about 10-15 miles south of Ely.

We stopped at the first campground we saw, a national forest campground called South Kawishiwi River. After figuring the campground out and seeing plenty of sites available, we stopped where the host was camped and talked to his assistant. We reserved a site and got a couple of bundles of firewood.

The campground was on the primitive side, is had outhouses and we had to haul water from the one pump available. This probably kept out the rowdier folks we some times encounter when camping. We set up our tent and Karen started dinner. Nick attempted to start a fire with the fire starting kit he bought at North West Company Fur Post in Pine City. It was definitely more difficult than he thought, and he eventually started the fire using the camp stove lighter. We decided against roasting marshmallows as it was getting late by the time we finished dinner. This was a very quiet campground, as we heard very little going on around us as the evening wore on.

The sun finally disappeared around 10, and we all went to bed. It often takes me a while to fall asleep in the tent, so I was listening for animals. I heard loons a few times, and boy, they are loud! I wonder why they call in the night. Given how close we were to Ely, I was hoping to hear wolves, but I'm pretty sure I only heard loons.

After breakfast and tearing down the camp, we decided to hike on the hiking trail that goes around the camp sites and down by the lake (although the site was called "South Kawishiwi River" I later found on maps that we were actually on Birch Lake). We ended up at a beach for a while, so we all went wading. At a bulletin board at the beach, I saw a sign that said "Welcome to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness" or something similar. Very cool, as I hadn't been to BWCAW in over 30 years! After the beach, we hike the trail all the way to the other end, where we had paid for our campsite and wood. It was a nice hike, probably about one and a half miles.

We got in the car to leave, and as we pulled around the loop, discovered that Sam had left his shoes on the ground just outside the car, so we headed back to the camp site, picked up Sam's shoes and left for our journey to Soudan.

Posted at 12:45PM Aug 20, 2007 by Dave Marquardt in Life  |