Porcupine Mountains, Day 2

We decided to do a little lunchtime hike today to a place called Shining Cloud Falls. Except the clouds weren't exactly shining; in fact, on our return hike, they produced quite a bit of precipitation. But here's how cool the four kiddos are: they thought the rain made the hike more fun. Can you beat that? I think they realized that a big downpour could mean we'd cash in on the ranger's statement from yesterday, when he said that we could have a campfire if the surrounding woods first got a good soaking.

The falls were really pretty, and though we hung out there for quite a while, we somehow didn't take any photos of the falls themselves! But Maria and Hannah amused themselves snapping photos of each other, and here is a sample of the result.




Jay found a very righteous-looking stick on the banks of the river, which he and the kids named "the staff of Gondor" after the kingdom in The Lord of the Rings. Here is Matt displaying it. Click it for a close-up - you'll swear the top of the stick is actually a deer antler.





During our break, Matt and Joe busied themselves with one of their favorite activities: moving rocks around. Hey, who needs Nintendo when you can play with rocks?

The rest of us, including Buster, just hung out and relaxed. Here's a shot of me with my dingo, just downstream from the falls.
Luckily the rain held off till we were done eating lunch. Jay snapped this kinda cool photo of the rocks on the edge of the falls, just as it started sprinkling and we were preparing to head back.

Once we got back to our cabins, it was pouring, so we hunkered down and listened to the rain and I read aloud from Harry Potter for a while. Here was part of my audience.



It wasn't too long before the skies cleared a bit, so the kids ran out to the bridge near our cabin and commenced fishing from the Big Carp River, which unfortunately produced no big carps or any other kind of fish. But at least it was entertaining!



While the kids fished, Jay got all manly with an axe and firewood. The axe, incidentally, was in the cabin when we arrived... it's not part of the gear we would normally schlep miles into the woods.



By evening, the weather had cleared enough to provide us with a beautiful view of the sunset over Lake Superior.