The technical generation....

I felt really old typing this title to the blog because at one time I was the technical generation and in my life before Clearwater I worked for software development companies. When I moved up here over 6 years ago, I was shocked with only having dial up connection and it was slow beyond slow. I used to save all the permit requests for when I would go to town and order them on the computers at the library during the permit lottery season. I adjusted and then technology changed and we were able to get satelite internet access. Wow, what an upgrade in speed (but still slower than most of the DSL speeds y'all have).

Today I just had to share this picture. All of our staff have their laptops with them and sometimes the kitchen looks look a computer lab with everyone sitting there on their laptops. AJ, Kevin and Donny have today off. AJ is taking an Internet summer course and the boys are researching fishing lures (of course) in this photo of our kitchen computer lab.

Rose Falls

Mike recently returned from two canoe trips, one to Rose Falls and one to Johnson Falls. This is one of his photos from his canoe trip.

Donny's parents are here for a visit. They went to dinner last night and saw 5 moose on the drive to and from Trail Center Grill. Donny said they saw one bull moose, two cows and calves and of course Buddy running down the road. Actually I think Buddy counts as the 6th moose.

Erik and Mike are out on a canoe trip now for a few days. We are waiting for their fishing report when they return.

Weather note: The last two days have been beautiful and sunny. The nights have been wet and rainy. We are getting enough rain to keep the lakes full and ground wet but it has not been excessive up here. Just typical June rain.

Bingo!

As all of use were getting pretty sick of the rain and dreary weather, we decided to find something to do that was out of the rain for entertainment. One of our members is an avid bingo player in the cities, and had been suggesting we play bingo in Grand Marais. So that is what we did. All of us headed up to Grand Portage last night for a couple hours of Bingo fun. Both Kirsten and Will managed to snag a bingo and walked away with some winnings. The rest of us unfortunatly were not so lucky... although I was one number away from the $1000 special pot.Quite a rush!

However perhaps by some other luck the weather today has turned out to be beautiful! A bit muggy almost, but sunny and with a nice breeze.

For those of you who have commented and asked about fishing: my sources have said that yes Caribou is showing good fishing, Walleye, Northerns and some small mouth bass. However for really good small mouth bass fishing, the boys (Kevin & Donny) went up to Rove the other night and caught buckets full and we had a fish fry. Again, please feel free to ask questions and give us your comments!

Update on roads: Most downed trees and debris areas have been cleaned up. Drive with caution nonetheless, there are some wash-out areas yet.

From the North-AJ

Bear Paw Print

Mike, who has joined our staff this summer from UW -Whitewater, gave me a number of photos from the two canoe trips he has taken since he has been here. On one trip he went to Caribou and visit Johnson Falls. On the second he went in at Duncan and went to Rose Falls.

Mike pointed out this one he took of a bear paw print on the Rose Falls trip.

Weather note: I have had several phone calls today regarding flooding so there must have been something on the news about the rain in Grand Marais last night. We just had a hard rain last night at mid-trail it was just a normal rain and Erik and Mike even headed into town to haul in all the recycle. When they got there, the recycle center was closed as were a number of other businesses.

The forest service measured 6.5 inches of rain by morning at their office on Lake Superior and we heard that there was 17 inches at the Apostle Islands. A number of gravel roads and drive ways washed out and there was flooding in low lying areas and on 61 near Cut Face creek along the big lake. The Gunflint Trail is fine as is Clearwater Road and the repair work other roads will be done quickly. We have a 30 % chance of rain tonight and 20% to 30% over the next few days. Highs will be in the upper 60's to low 70's and lows in the upper 40's to low 50's.