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.
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.)
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.)
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.
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.
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.
It’s a testament to their teachers, who they both know very well, and the school, that they were excited (and not at all nervous) to return!
