September 15, 2025
Low 57 degrees, high 73, sunny!
Finland State Park Campground was a great place to stay, peaceful, quiet, pretty. At first national forest and state forests, make me a little nervous. They are remote, and you don’t know what crowd will frequent them. This one couldn’t have been better. It is well maintained, clean and good facilities.
Martha made Mr. Sutton scrambled eggs using bacon, peppers and left-over french fries – yum!
It’s only an hour and a half to Duluth, but first to the dump station in Silver Bay. While preparing to hook up, I noticed a missing nut on the awning arm. I don’t care how many nuts and screws you carry, you can’t have them all.
After dumping, I did Sandra Wheless’ blackwater treatment, putting soap and Borax down the toilet, then giving a generous flush. During travel this will slosh around and clean the tank. Probably should do it to the gray water tank too.
In Two Harbors we turned onto Scenic 61 that runs right on the coast. It is very pretty, with rest stops and picnic tables all along the way. You can ooh and ahh at the cute cabins and grand houses. Do they just come in summer? Certainly some are here year around.
As we entered the city, there were many magnificent homes. Then it merged into apartments. We turned onto I35, which is under heavy construction, but the traffic wasn’t bad. We turned off of that and wound our way to Spirit Lake Marine and RV Park. Mostly, it is an eclectic boat harbor on Spirit Lake.
We backed into site #4 and setup. When I went in the trailer, the water pump was going! I must have left it on when I treated the black water tank. Fortunately, no faucets turned on, or it could have been a very bad day. The galley faucet is usually the culprit, so we take the drain out of the sink and put a rubber band over the on/off lever. I had that problem in Oregon years ago when learned the hard way. the drain was in the sink and all that bouncing around closed it and opened the lever. I entered the trailer with a full sink of water and water all over the floor.
The probably was the pump was dry. I turned the pump off, removed the back panel of the storage cabined under the refrigerator and the little, clear bowl in front of the pump was dry. Once I added a little water, it ran fine. It was an easy fix that could have been much worse.
We had lunch looking out the window at the water and boats. We loaded up all the dirty laundry and went to another eclectic place, a laundry that used to be a car-side fast food restaurant. Two old carseats were outside. The neighborhood was a bit rough, but the machines were great. $5.50 for a large machine wash – in quarters. We filled two of those and sat in the only chair on that side of the laundry. The other side had smaller machines and one more chair.
As Martha said, it would have taken into the evening if we had used the marina’s single washer and dryer. Besides, the people watching is good. One nice fellow brought four large trash bags full of clothes and loaded them into two even larger machines. He probably has nine children. He knows the routine and was very efficient.
Back with clean clothes and sheets, we put them away and made the beds. Having showered in the trailer for the last three nights, it was good to take a real shower. Then we fixed a drink and walked around the harbor, gawking at some beautiful boats. There were more sailboats than motor boats. One big, beautiful sailboat looked like it had many stories to tell. Similarly, one old Airstream got my attention. After a little investigation: The J in the serial number means it was made in Jackson Center, Ohio; 1 means International model (top of the line); 30 means 30ft; 5 means 1965. From https://www.airstream.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/1959-to-1980-Airstream-and-Argosy-Serial-Number-Decoder-2020-06-16.pdf. That is 61 years old and still in use!! I must say the quality was better then, when it was a family-owned business that employed local people who took a lot of pride in what they made.
Martha warmed up the chicken pot pies from Agostino’s, which were very good.
This book has been the perfect bedtime read. He is a hunter and fisherman, who was a writer for Field and Stream Magazine. The stories are a page or two in length, sometimes a series of these. Last night it was how he loves coking in a Dutch oven. One was about how we use GPS on our phone so much, we can no longer use a map and topographic features (as our canoe friend said in Quetico).
