We woke up after one of the best nights sleep of the whole trip. We watched a serious meteor shower as we fell asleep and woke up early to a beautiful sunrise over the bay. We called Hannah’s parents and found out they would be here in the evening so we had a whole day to relax. This seemed like a great idea until after lunch and then we just started getting bored. I even went for a short paddle to relieve the boredom. After 2 months in my boat and I went for paddle. I showered at the local campground and waited to head back home. Hannah’s folks showed up with Rainy just as the sun was starting to set. It was so good to see them and Rainy could not have been happier to be back with us. We headed home to Houghton in the dark after loading the boats. It was the first time I had really been in the car since we left home over two months ago. After the 4 hour drive I was exhausted and could barely enjoy the fact that I was home. The house was still the dump we left but it was nice to fall asleep in a real bed with our dog snuggled in between us.
On Friday morning we got up early and I started in on making the presentation we were supposed to give that evening. I spent most of the day hanging around at Ladies of the Lake working on the slideshow. Our friends and Jon and Kendra, who paddled with us in Wisconsin, came up to see us and it was great to have a few faces we new in the audience. Hannah presented to about 100 women and it was fun to relive the trip while it was still so fresh and unprocessed in my mind. The presentation went great and was really well received. It was a load off to be done with it and we went home to relax.
The rest of the weekend we just hung around Calumet and relaxed. It was nice to have Hannah’s parents around. We saw the other presentation at Ladies of the Lake and I felt like it validated our trip and made me feel like a real kayaker.
When the weekend was over we made plans to head back to Grand Marais and get back on the water. Our friend Dan Graham offered to ride down with us and drive the truck home when we hit the water. The weather forecast wasn’t great but we were antsy to get out again and didn’t want to get to comfortable at home. When we got there we found 10 foot waves crashing on the beach so we decided to camp for a night and see if it improved. It didn’t and the weather forecast said it wouldn’t for 3 days. So we decided to go home. On the way we dropped our boats off at my brother’s house in Negaunee and bought a refrigerator at Lowe’s in Marquette. We needed one and couldn’t imagine getting through 3 days at home without some good food. We also bought a deep fryer because after 2 months deep fried food is good food.
We spent the next 3 days gorging ourselves and playing with Rainy. We made plans with my brother to pick up our boats and drive back to Grand Marais again. He was going ot take the truck back to his house while we paddled. We only had a few days until Hannah started school so we knew we couldn’t the remaining miles in one go and we were going to have to split it into two 100 mile chunks.
