Category Archives: Andrew

Du Nord 2023

We spent the third week of June up at Camp Du Nord. It was our fourth visit to this amazing family camp on the edge of the Boundary Waters in Northern Minnesota. We eschewed our tech gadgets on this trip, so we didn’t take many pictures. But it was a fabulous week of hiking, swimming, canoeing, kayaking, enjoying the arts and crafts options, and playing lots of games on our cabin’s lovely screen porch. And we appreciated, of course, the wood fired sauna with a ramp leading directly into the cool lake—the perfect way to feel refreshed at the end of a hard-working day.

The family in front of Burntside Lake and Blueberry Island.

For the second or third time, we got our camp reservations with the Brown family. We met them when Griffin and Gabe were in ECFE together when we first moved to Minnesota. All three kids are in the same age groups as ours, so they have a lot of fun together. (There were multiple sleepovers and late-night games.)

The Browns—our favorite camp companions.

I always like to include a map or two because maps are cool. Obviously. This is a topo map scaled at about 8 meters per pixel (at full resolution… click on it). Camp Du Nord is along the north shore of the North Arm of Burntside Lake, north and east of the “Birch Bay” label. Sarah and I hiked out toward the pink lake on the northwest side of the map (around the red 33). Griffin’s age group canoed south into the channel that connects to the larger lake. They portaged from the channel to Chant Lake and then swam out to a small island there. (My borrowed sunglasses may still be wedged in a crevice on that island.)

Topographical map of the area.
Google terrain map of approximately the same extent.

As with our last visit, inkle weaving was a popular pastime for Griffin, Maggie, and Sarah. Sarah is, in fact, considering making her own inkle loom for home use.

Products of the inkle loom: Griffin, Maggie, and Sarah respectively from left to right.

One of the daily activities for the kids is called “Nature Notes.” They gather at 9:00 AM, before regular activities, and learn about the ecosystem around the camp. On the first day, Oliver received a “Plant Passport” with sketches of different local plants that he could try to spot in the wild. (I may have been more excited by this challenge than he was.) In the end we were able to check off all but one of the plants. We’re pretty sure that we saw that last plant, too, but it wasn’t blooming so we weren’t 100% sure. The most exciting find, especially during this hot, dry week, was a sundew that we found on a walk through a bog.

Sundew, a type of carnivorous plant that catches
passing insects with its sticky droplets of “dew.”

As a nerdy aside, my first encounter with a sundew was in the 1980 D&D adventure, Slave Pits of the Undercity. In the adventure, naturally, characters encounter a giant variety that happily gorges itself on human-sized prey; barrels of vinegar from a nearby storeroom were required to dissolve its glue. I was surprised to learn, many years later, that sundews are both real and relatively petite.

More Pizza!

Sarah and the kids surprised me with an early father’s day present this year: a wood-fired pizza oven! We’ve loved the green egg grill for pizza, but it takes a while to get up to temperature and it takes longer to cook a pie. This sleek thing heats rapidly and cooks a pizza in 60 seconds flat. It’s amazing.

Spring Weather

As a bit of an April Fools day meteorological joke, we were hit with a fairly severe blizzard overnight. With 8.5 inches of snow at the airport, this puts us at the third snowiest winter since records began in 1971. And this wasn’t just a blizzard, it was a thunder blizzard. Lightning and thunder accompanied the billowing snow in the evening. Our power went out for an hour or so in the night, but was miraculously back on before sunrise.

View from the front door this morning.
And out back…

For more details, check out this morning’s post on the Updraft Blog (MPR’s weather site).

Snow Days

A big winter storm came through this week. Two more days off from school. (First day was a false-positive… we could have easily made it to school, but it had already been called.) Today (the second day), seems much more justified.

Back porch scene this morning (with a few more hours of snow to come).

Actually, this is just for Andrew and Griffin’s school (SPA). Maggie and Oliver got three days off!