In which we go north

Over the years I have learned that "up north" is a relative term for most people. It seems to just mean any place that is a few hours north of where they normally live. "Up North" for me is a very specific location though, the cottage that my parents have been renting on the shore of Lake Superior since I was in second grade, when the birth of my youngest sister led them to decide that they might have outgrown the hotel room that they had previously rented. But the woman they rent "their" cottage from is now into her nineties, and it is far from clear how much longer her children will allow her to go to the Keweenaw Peninsula alone.

So I wanted to make sure that we headed up north this summer since we won't be in the States next summer, and since it seems like any year might be the last year that my parents head up there. (If you look at the webpage for the Shoreline though Mom, it looks like they are now renting out both a two bedroom cabin and a three bedroom apartment. Just in case you were interested.) My original plans were to finish moving out of our house on Friday afternoon and start the trip up north yet that evening, staying somewhere around Beloit, WI. By Thursday night I'd scratched that plan, and determined that we'd in fact leave around 7:00 on Saturday morning, which would give us plenty of time to stop for breaks and still make it up to the cottage by dinnertime. By Friday evening it was clear that we'd never be done with the house that evening and so the new plan was to quickly finish up the house on Saturday morning and be on the road by 9:00. We made 9:00, Mountain time.

The drive up was uneventful, other than a stop for lunch at the World's Largest Culver's, along with every boy scout troop in the upper midwest, and a near collision with a deer 15 miles south of the cottage. Oh, and a spirited debate in the gas station convenience store over whether or not there existed a kind of gum that all three kids would actually be willing to chew. Answer, possibly, but we haven't found it yet.

I'll spare you the details of our eight days up north. The kids went hunting for copper on a tailing pile with Grandpa once, and hunting for agates and thomsonite along Lake Superior once. And we went to the Seaman Mineral Museum once, where Sapphire saw a third of the collection very thoroughly with my mom, and the rest of us saw the entire collection considerably less thoroughly with my dad. We went to Fort Wilkins, which was only actually occupied as a fort for about five years, but which has been a state park for nearly a century. We also spent nearly four days without hot water, spent most of the first five days we were there wearing coats in the living room because it was so cold, and provided food to a host of mosquitos, black flies, and noseeums. We did make it to the beach the last three days we were there, and were only chased away by the black flies the last day, and went to mass the first Sunday at Holy Redeemer Church in Eagle Harbor and the second Sunday at Saint Paul the Apostle in Calumet.

And then we headed back to Chicago on Monday morning, racing to beat both the car rental return deadline and the storm that was impending.