Radio Waves

While JP was watching some crazy sci-fi movie, I was sitting on the floor playing with a PC-based radio receiver and some antennas on my laptop. The incoming signals were making those weird whistling sounds like an old radio. JP thought it was very funny. It was not.

 

Fall Color

We are having a spectacular fall this year. The patio is covered with glowing yellow maple leaves. It takes about an hour for it to be covered again after cleaning it off.

 

Downtown Walking

I went to the Minnesota Design and Manufacturing show downtown for half a day. I took the bus and enjoyed the sights on the walk to and from the convention center.

 

State of Hockey

I picked up some hockey skates for $25 on Facebook Marketplace. Can't wait to try them out! Between skates, skis, and snowshoes, we're going to be busy this winter.

 

Let There Be Light!

After going two years without lights around the lake, we finally have lights again! Copper thieves stole the wires from miles of streets and parkways here and in St. Paul. The new wires are aluminum, and each lamppost has a sticker on it saying that there's no copper and the aluminum is not worth anything.

 

New Nightstands

We finally replaced our old nightstands with some new ones that better match the room.

City Sunrises

As nice as the sunrises at Gunflint were, the sunrises here at home are also nice!

 

Lutsen Mountain

On the way home, we stopped at Lutsen and took the gondola to the top of the ski mountain. We were a week late on catching the maples. The day before there was a windstorm that stripped the leaves from the tree and left them bare.

There's a nice cafe at the top that serves fries & beer.

 

Gunflint Formation

One of the coolest and most underappreciated things about the area around the lodge are the rocks of the Gunflint Formation. They are a breccia that was put in place 1.8 billion years ago when an asteroid hit the east end of Lake Superior. The impact and resulting tsunami broke apart the existing banded iron formation and mixed the chunks all up.

There's a good sized boulder of it on the beach, and all the rocks making up the fireplace in the main lodge are made of it. You can see the individual chunks of rock that were broken up.

 

Trails End Campground

The Gunflint Trail dead ends a few miles up the road from the lodge. There's a National Forest campground there that has campsites with incredible views overlooking the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. 

 

Magnetic Rock

No trip to Gunflint is complete without doing the hike to Magnetic Rock. It's a 30 foot tall monolith of a banded iron formation that was lifted up and put in place by the glaciers.

I didn't have a compass with me, so I used the magnetometer on my phone to see how magnetic the rocks were.

 

Sunrise, Sunset

The sunsets and sunrises on the lake were spectacular. One of the things that makes it so nice is that there is no one on it. 

 

Boat Day

We rented a pontoon boat for half a day and cruised down the lake and back. CG wanted to fish, so we ran at a slow trolling speed the whole way and enjoyed the solitude of the lake.

There were three other boats on the lake that were doing the same thing.

 

Fall Hike

We had beautiful weather despite it being too warm for this time of year. Who would have thought we'd be hiking in shorts in October up on the Canadian border?

There are a bunch of trails behind the lodge that go up to the tops of the bluffs. 

 

Sitting & Relaxing

Besides hiking and exploring, there's a lot of just sitting and relaxing up north.

There's a little river otter that lives near the boat house. I caught a glimpse of it at sunrise.

 

Gunflint Lodge

For the 3rd year in a row, we made it up to Gunflint Lodge, near the end of the Gunflint Trail 50 miles north of Grand Marais.

 

Book League

Since we completed the kitchen floor, I've been itching to host our book club. We had a perfect night for it and conducted business on the patio. We used to be known as the Lynnhurst Men's Book Club, but we changed the name and now it's the Lynnhurst Men's Book League. It's sort of like a golf or bowling league where each player has a handicap. In our case, we are spotted a number of unread pages. This helps those that never seem to read the complete book. September's book was Risk Pool.

 

Going Wild

CP's b-day gift was a Minnesota Wild vs. Chicago Blackhawks game. We grabbed some cheeseburgers at Burger Moe's and had a great time at the game. CP wore his autographed Ryan Hartman Blackhawks jersey (now playing for the Wild).. 

 

Birthday Season

For GP's b-day, we walked across the corner to the best Italian restaurant in the Twin Cities: Broder's Pasta Bar. For CP's special day, we played a rousing game of Scythe.

 

Backyard Burn Season

Our last order of firewood lasted almost exactly one year. The temps have cooled down enough to once again enjoy a backyard fire with the neighbors.