THE ELUSIVE MOOSE

I had this idea that I would be posting a picture of my hand holding a fifty cent piece. I could clearly see it and the words that I would write as a caption. It would say something sweet and a bit sappy, a tribute to Dad. As we prepared for our trip, Michael and I confessed to squirreling away a fifty cent piece. He said he had called all the banks looking for one, but finally ended up digging through an old change jar to find one. I told him that mine came from the stash I’d saved from the tooth fairy. We were ready. I was ready.

But we never saw a moose.

Our first day in Grand Marais, we were out the door by 6:00 AM and traveling along the Gunflint Trail. This is the road we were told to take. We didn’t take the road to the end, but instead turned off onto a gravel loop section of the trail. The map kept throwing out warnings of possible flooding and washed out roads. We had arrived in Grand Marais during a torrential downpour. It was still sprinkling that morning. At least two vehicles passed us going in the opposite direction and after stopping to drag a tree out of the road, we understood why. I ended up dragging two trees out of our path that day. We stopped by a pond to watch and eat our breakfast sandwiches, expecting a moose to step out into the waters at any moment. We moved on after finishing our breakfast, continuing our trek and spotting a black bear.

But never a moose.

We eventually made the loop on around to the main road back to town. We parked at our cabin and then walked into town and out to the Grand Marais lighthouse. We visited the Welcome Center where we were handed various maps and advice on moose spotting. We ate lunch in town before walking back to the cabin for naps where we both slept for hours. Then we made ourselves dinner. We had purchased groceries once we made it to town the night before, planning our meals but not our flavors. The two of us discussed what flavors to put on our lake trout fillets. We had candied pecans and half a bag of Michael’s spicy nacho Funyans. We chose the Funyans and it wasn’t a bad choice.

After our dinner, we headed back out to the Gunflint Trail. This time we stayed on the trail, driving it all the way to it’s end up in the Boundary Waters. I didn’t know about the Boundary Waters until the day before. We had stopped in for a stamp at the Superior National Forest station. There we were greeted by a sullen twenty something year old who told us about the Boundary Waters and basically told us that our moose hunt might as well be a hunt for unicorns. The Boundary Waters are 1.1 million acres of wilderness accessible mostly by canoe with some foot trails. It is wet, boggy and wild. You must have a permit to enter and the trails are not marked. This is of course a prime moose environment. We were not prepared to go into the Boundary Waters. So we drove as far as we could into the wilderness, constantly scanning the landscape in search of moose.

But we did not see a moose.

We saw a fox and deer. We saw a lone turtle attempting to cross the road and falcon soaring across the cloudy skies. We did not see a moose. It seemed that sullen twenty something year old was correct and then we made a decision. We were not going to let a moose hunt define our trip north. The next morning, we rose at a reasonable hour and lingered over breakfast. Then we loaded up the truck and drove north to the Canadian boarder. We hiked out to see Pigeon Falls, the tallest falls in Minnesota. We stopped for pie before making our way back south and to the Devil’s Kettle Falls. The hike to the falls was more than we expected. The trail had us climbing up rugged steps, down 193 steps and through mud just to get to the falls. I left Chris there and then we had to make our way out. I was sure we’d have to carry Josephine up those 193 steps, but she practically ran up them. Once we made it out, I made Michael stop in the campground there so I could rinse the mud out of Josephine’s paws. After stopping for lunch, we collapsed in our cabin pleased with how we’d spent our last day in Grand Marais.

So, we didn’t see a moose.

We saw beautiful falls and wilderness. The wildflowers were breathtaking, every road lined with colorful blooms. We spent days without radio signal or internet. We saw a black bear! Which apparently is more rare of a sighting than moose. We soaked up the chilly weather knowing that Kansas City was sweltering in summer temps. We fought off swarms of mosquitoes, swarms like we’d never seen before. We saw Canada. Passport snafus kept us from going into Canada, but we saw it from a distance. It’s surprising how close we are to the Canadian boarder. We learned a lot about looking for moose and boundary waters. We discovered the charm of Duluth and Minneapolis and made plans to visit again. Friday morning, we packed up and headed south. We left the Superior National Forest and we were finally able to pick up some radio stations. U2’s I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For started playing through the truck speakers. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I chose to laugh.

Then I pulled out my phone and started planning our next moose hunt.