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Showing posts with label Leech Lake. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Leech Lake. Show all posts

Wednesday, 18 June 2008

The Bugwayjinini

Leech Lake, Minnesota

In Ojibwe, the word for a Bigfoot-like creature is bugwayjinini, meaning Wild Man. The sightings of the creature have been on the increase in the rural areas around Lake Leech. Some estimates are that 300-400, perhaps as many as 500 of them now live in the area.

It is thought that they are migrating toward the east, perhaps to avoid a pending catastrophe. I've seen actual plaster casts of a bugwayjinini footprints, which leaves little doubt that they inhabit this area. The Ojibwe believe the bugwayjinini were put on Earth by the creator to teach the people medicine...they can build shelters and these are often are associated with piles of bones...


Last night I went to the lodge and the owners were apparently out sailing on the lake. I made a list of the items I took, according to a note they left and asked them to add it to my tab:
- 1 bundle firewood
- 1 bottle shiraz
- 1 package marshmellows
- 1 box Honey Maid Graham crackers
- 3 Hersey Bars



The lake is cold, but it's not glacier melt. I could swim in it. They sell leeches as bait here. Some of the huge artificial lures offered for sale imply very big fish live in the lake.

We have been biking every day. There's a paved bike trail that runs nearby. It is built on an abandoned rail line. The RV Park is a combination marina and RVs. It's very seasonal and most people rent spaces by the season. There are only a few spots for transients like us. We have a spot right on the lake. We're day-to-day because their computer is broken and they have no idea whether they've reserved our spot for someone else.

Probably we'll move on tomorrow. I want to go further north and see the Voyaguer National Park up on the border. It's amazing how many National Parks and National Monuments there are that I've never heard of before. I'll always regret missing the Agate Fossil National Monument in Nebraska.

Monday, 16 June 2008

An Inconvenient Truth

Leech Lake, Minnesota

This is a cool place. We're parked on the shore of the third largest lake in Minnesota. The front wheels are practically in the lake, so we can see the waves though the windshield.


We're next to the swimming area, which has an old-fashioned slide, a raft and a sand beach. The bicycles are finally off the back of the RV. The tires are pumped up to 40 PSI and the seats are adjusted. A 100 mile paved trail runs right by the lake. We can rent small boats and canoes and fish for walleyes, bass, perch and pickerel. There'a an Indian casino nearby. The lodge next door sells ice cream. The liquor store is a half mile away. The town of Walker, two miles south, has tennis courts.


I still have fat novels to read by Greg Bear and Norman Mailer. It's not against the rules here to wash your vehicles or change your oil. Most private campgrounds have rules against those activities.


The 500 mile run up here from the Badlands was fraught with errors. First off, I chose rural highways rather than Interstate. Well...DUH!...they don't build campgrounds where RVs don't normally travel...and...it's a summer holiday weekend so the two campgrounds we found were full...and...the longer you drive, the more full the available campgrounds become. So we ended up with no campsite at dusk on a rest area west of Fargo...It was quite nice, really, to split a bottle of Shiraz and some dark chocolate for dinner and then drift off to sleep to the drone of a refrigerated meat truck's generator...


We had a situation on the drive with a severe thunderstorm with one-inch hail, tornadoes and 70 MPH wind gusts..we reversed course for awhile to outrun it then headed back north and followed it down the interstate to Fargo...On this Father's Day, our son turned 39...we're too young to have a son that old...an inconvenient truth...but, happy birthday, Love Bandit...