Superior Circle Tour: Getting To The Start

Our Superior starting point in Duluth where we don our rain gear.

Our Superior Circle Tour schedule has been refined and finalized, with each day’s destination carefully selected. Poldi is a wonderful travel agent, arranging and reserving a safe harbor for each night along the tour.

Our first day however, involves actually getting to the shores of Lake Superior from our home in Minneapolis, about 150 miles away. And our first night will be with Poldi’s sister April at her lakeshore cabin, another 100 or more miles along the north shore near Grand Marais. This total would make a brutal first day on a motorcycle for us, as unconditioned as we are for the iron-butt competition. So we made an alternate plan.

It turns out that our Go-trailer/camper also accommodates drive-on cargo. It tilts down to allow a motorcycle, or any other such vehicle, to drive up onto the trailer bed where it can be strapped into place and hauled to wherever! Our wherever is April’s basecamp home in Duluth, where we can unload the bike, leave the trailer in the driveway, and make an official start on our Lake Superior Circle Tour.

It seemed straightforward, so allocating a full hour in the morning to load the bike on the trailer should be more than enough, right? But the perversity of inanimate objects prevailed. The Go-trailer balked at being loaded, its elevator winch failing and the tilt feature not tilting. The self-loading ramp failed to self-load: I could drive the bike partway up, but could not get the rear wheel onto the trailer bed. Carefully manipulating this powerful 500-pound machine, climbing the 30-degree incline was too much for my self-preservation instincts. After a half-dozen failed attempts and with smoke issuing from the clutch, we abandoned the effort.

Fortunately, we had a plan-B: drive the full distance from Minneapolis to Grand Marais.

Unfortunately, we had burned our morning on plan-A.

Fortunately, the rain that was forecast was for later in the day.

Unfortunately, the forecast was wrong.

Our delayed start resulted in traveling along the storm front as it progressed from Duluth along the North Shore. When it wasn’t raining, it was blowing. We were relieved to finally arrive at April’s cabin where she took us in, dried us off, warmed us up, and celebrated our arrival with a glass of wine and a nice dinner.

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Fifteen Minutes of Fame

Enjoying the beauty of the BWCA in Superior National Forest. See https://www.sylvansport.com/go-field-notes-boundary-waters-mn/

Andy Warhol, the celebrated pop artist of the 1960s, is credited with the quote “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Well, I guess we have reached the future, because here is our fifteen minutes.

We are the proud owners of a trailer that converts into a tent-like camper. It’s made by a US company, Sylvan Sport. We first learned about it from my cousin Bonnie Norman, an early adopter of nearly everything, and when I finally relinquished my VW Eurovan Westfalia pop-up (to a deserving family eager to enjoy and care for it), this was the obvious replacement. We have enjoyed our “Go Trailer” for several years now and somehow (from Bonnie?), Sylvan Sport learned of our enthusiasm and wanted to feature us on their website.

Our travel plans this last year were modified, along with everyone else’s in this time of covid rules. We didn’t make the cross-country trips we expected, but substituted numerous short trips to our wonderful Minnesota State Parks. I also redeemed a coupon from the Gerard sisters, to guide me in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, a destination I was embarrassed to admit as a lifelong Minnesotan, I had not yet visited.

It was a beautiful fall week and I took my usual collection of cameras. Sylvan Sport sent a photographer to capture it as well, and a writer later called to interview us. The result is a promotional piece on their website that depicts the experience nicely, despite being truly impossible to portray the full beauty of Boundary Waters.