Deb and I have been doing a yearly retreat to Ely and the BWCA for quite some time now. Generally, I would go up on a Saturday with Deb going up on the following Tuesday. We’d spend 24 hours or so together and I would leave for home and she would stay up there through Saturday morning. This year we were navigating the healing of Lexi (one of our three cats) who had to have a rear leg amputated due to a cancerous growth. This caused us to bypass our day together and instead just meet in Cloquet, which is halfway between home and Ely.
My first full day I went to the Bass Lake Trail and took the Dry Lake path… never again. The north side of Dry Lake where the path goes by is super rocky and tough on ankles and such. Anyway, beautiful scenery but that trail was a bit too rocky for the likes of me. Then I headed to Kawishiwi Falls, an easily accessible waterfalls near town. Next full day I went to the Vermillion Gorge (an annual journey) and then Vermillion Falls (which is right next door and on the way back to Ely. Well, the combination of the two days of hiking and I think my current workouts on the treadmill all gave me a nice painfully stiff knee. Knee issues kept me local my last full day whereas normally I would be doing a 3-4 lake paddle and portage day trip. Discretion being the better part of valor I stuck near town instead of being out on my own in the wilderness.
The weather was amazing. The cabin, great. I saw bald eagles, deer, beavers, caught four northern pike, searched for but never saw any bears. 🙂
Ely Minnesota is such a beautiful and peaceful place.
