There is something
intensely satisfying about sitting inside a tent and watching mosquitoes try
unsuccessfully to get in. They ram repeatedly
into the netting in the tent’s mesh windows but never make it through. If there are enough of them and you listen
closely, you can hear their buzz of futility.
Inside the tent, all is calm and bug-free. It’s a nice feeling.
This morning I
woke up in another beautiful campsite.
I’d followed a small dirt road to its end, and wound up looking out over
Lake Superior in an area just big enough to turn a car around. After I hung a towel to dry over the “no
camping” sign, it was the perfect campsite.
(The ranger who came by about 11pm was nice enough to let me stay after
I promised to leave first thing in the morning.) So I woke up with a gorgeous view of the
lake, and Lou woke up to an awesome swimming hole. The morning was cool enough that I needed a pullover. Lou and I had a slow morning as I made bacon,
eggs, and coffee.
This was my day entirely
in the U.P.—no travel imperatives. Lou and
I were on the road around 9:30. We wandered
west, basically following the lakeshore.
We drove through Emerson, Paradise, Deer Park, Grand Marais. We hiked a few miles in Pictured Rocks
National Lakeshore and paused to stroll barefoot (both of us) on Twelvemile
Beach. Twelvemile Beach is one of those
places that is just too impossibly gorgeous to take in. You just look around, smile, and try to
appreciate it. You take a picture and
you know the picture won’t do it justice, but you hope it’ll help your memory
later. Then you leave and wish you knew how
to describe it to others.
Just offshore from
Twelvemile Beach, at least according to the DeLorme Atlas & Gazatteer, is
the “Alger Underwater Preserve.”
Inexplicably, there is a picture of car next to the words “Underwater
Preserve” in my atlas. The car hovers over
the blue ink that denotes Lake Superior.
I threw a tennis ball into the water and Lou retrieved it a few times,
but that was as close to Alger as we got.
Lou came back very wet, so I did not think it wise to take my Subaru out
there. Mr. DeLorme can take his car if
he chooses.
After a restaurant
dinner in Marquette, I drove a few miles north and stopped in what I believe to
be Escanaba River State Forest. I was
not picky about the campsite—it was about to be dusk, and I’ve learned that
although the U.P.’s mosquitoes aren’t bad during the long summer days, they
swarm like mad just after sunset. So the
wise move is to have your tent set up and
be finished getting things out of your car before the skeeter swarm arrives at sunset. That way you have a mosquito-free tent and
car. Last night I kept the car doors
open for too long, with the consequence that I shared my car with a hundred or
so mosquitoes for the first part of this morning’s drive. They were not welcome passengers, and did not want
to leave. Lou and I ended up driving
80mph for a stretch with all four windows, the sunroof, and the rear door
open. That flushed most of them out, but
not all. So this evening, I had camp set
up before dusk, which isn’t until
9:45 or so anyway. The tent is skeeter-free
and I think the car is too, although I guess I won’t find out until morning.
And so it is that
I have come to be sitting in my tent typing to you, dear reader. It is a nice night, and peaceful, and I have
a good book, and I like camping, but at times like this I do miss my wife and
daughter. They are in Colorado but not
in a tent, so if they can see the mosquitoes outside, they cannot hear that
satisfying buzz of futility. I will have
to tell them all about it.
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