Day 5 - Monocle Lake to Twelvemile Beach, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

It was raining this morning, a good day for a drive...but it stopped.

Speedy didn't go far today, only 117 miles, about a third of our recent daily drives. As usual, Ellen did a quick walk to count her early morning birds. As it was raining, there wasn't much to find. Like the birds, I hid out in Speedy and got ready to travel on.

It was a rather quick drive west along Rt 28 and then north on 77 to Grand Marais, the town at the east end of the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. By the time we arrived, the rain had stopped and the sky was clearing.

Grand Marais was also the only town along our route with a grocery store. I think we are going to have to get re-accustomed to shopping in small stores like this one. We are taking a non-Interstate route to Montana, mostly through small towns and once we get past Banff and Jasper, we probably won't see a supermarket until we get to Fairbanks. This one was pretty good small grocery. Ellen bought some reasonable vegetables, although the broccoli was a bit past its prime, along with the necessary milk, eggs and cheese.

Grand Marais seemed to be outdoor visitor oriented, with a well-stocked camping and fishing outfitter (complete with a pair of customer service Samoyed dogs), a good-sized hardware store, two markets, one was more of a convenience store and gas station, a couple of restaurants and a craft brewery.

After Grand Marais, it was off to the Grand Sable Visitor Center...which was still closed for the season. They did have copies of the park guide outside which gave us the information we needed to find a campsite. There are only three small first-come, first-serve drive-in campgrounds in the park, all fairly primitive. Two were relatively nearby, Hurricane River and Twelvemile Beach. The two areas at Hurricane River were quite wooded and the they were virtually empty. We went on to Twelvemile Beach. It was right on Lake Superior well above the beach. It was also at least half-full already by mid-morning on a Thursday.

We found there were still a few lakefront sites, but there were no two available next to one another, so we are separated by another site. They are quite sizable and we have a view of the lake, but not the beach, itself, from Speedy.

After lunch, Ellen, Sally and I hiked White Birch Trail, which started directly across the road from our campsite. It is only a two mile loop, but starts by going straight up at a 15-30% grade topping out in an open pine and fir forest on a plateau above the campground and lake. The initial climb was quite littered with fallen trees across the trail. It looked like there had been no trail maintenance in a while. As we were walking along a Park Service trail crew came along going the other way, complete with chain saws. I guess we were just a day early.

We walked along the trail and also birded a bit, although it was pretty quiet up there. It is an interpretive trail and we had the guide from a box at the entrance to the trail. It was a bit hard to apply as it was obviously written for summer visitors and much of the described vegetation had not appeared yet.

The spring is actually not far along yet. The deciduous trees are just starting to leaf out and it seems to be a month behind Cohasset and even significantly behind Algonquin park in Ontario where we were only two days ago. The temperature when we arrived was only in the forties and got to the mid-fifties this afternoon. It is back in the forties now and we have Speedy's furnace on. We are actually pretty far north, about the same as northern Maine, but I'm hoping it is more lake-effect weather than latitude since we have another 2000 miles to go at this latitude. It could be a chilly drive to Montana.

The trail finally lived up to its name in the last quarter mile when the pine forest gave way to a White Birch forest. Then we came back out onto the campground entrance road and it was back to Speedy for our afternoon coffee and a bit of lazing about.

We will probably be back on the road tomorrow. After a stop at the other end of the park to actually see the Pictured Rocks, we will continue west until we decide to stop. We hope to find a park with showers and a dump station as both are needed. We are not quite ready to use Speedy's own shower yet.

Travel Details
Monocle Lake Campground, Hiawatha National Forest to Twelvemile Beach Campground, Pictured Rocks National Seashore.
Distance 117 miles
Time 4 hrs. 24 min.