Vermilion Adventure with my Boys, Niece, and Nephew

I posted this on social media a week ago with the caption "WE'RE GOING ON AN ADVENTURE!!!"

I took my boys and my niece and nephew (each of them are about 9 months younger than each of my boys) up to Lake Vermilion State Park for 4 days and 3 nights! Here's a handful of photos from our trip:

Playing at a park in Cloquet, MN.


Sammy's Pizza for lunch on the road! We housed these 2 pizzas.


Candy store and free pinball in Ely.




Our camper cabin for the next 3 nights!


Burgers over the fire for supper.


Sleeping arrangements: me down low, and Henry and Evie up in the loft.


Charlie on the pull-out, and Wes on a cot.
(The wide angle lens makes this look SPACIOUS, but it wasn't quite this open.)

Lake Vermilion has 2 styles of NEW and BIGGER camper cabins. The "standard" cabin in 90% of the other parks is like the kind we stayed in up at Big Bog this past winter. And we stayed in the other "newer and bigger" style last year when we went up there with my Mom.

Sunset before a brief storm on our first night.

The next morning, we fried some bacon and eggs, and then we took off for nearby Bear Hear Lake State Park. We wanted to rent a boat and do some fishing. Charlie started us off with the biggest fish of the day:

A northern!!






Ev with a sunny!


Henry with a TINY one.


Wes with a nice one.


I caught the fewest.

Henry ended up with the most, Charlie had the biggest FISH (northern), Wes had the biggst SUNNY, and I had the least fish (2). All in all, we caught 25 fish in just over 2 hours.

That night we tried our first big camping experiment: FUNNEL CAKES over the fire! I brought some batter, and filled my pan with oil:

Tasty!!


Wes thought these were the best.


Swimming after fishing.


Flooded boardwalks.


Two snappers we were trying SO hard NOT to catch!
(There was a big northern below them that just wasn't interested in anything we had.)


Breakfast earlier in the day...


... hamsteak and green beans for supper.

Day 3 started with a tour of Soudan Mine. It was our 3rd time there, and we still haven’t been able to make it down into the mine! (First was COVID, second was elevator maintenance, and last week it was flooded from the rain and because lightning hit the tower and killed a pump in the middle of the night with no one around, and the 27th floor down was full of water 2 feet from the ceiling!) So we ran around through the buildings and on the surface:

And then we tried something new again for supper. Along side of our burgers, we made devil's food chocolate cake inside of hollowed-out oranges:

Wes and I ate the chunks we pulled out.


Cake batter.


Burgers on the grill, 5 oranges wrapped in foil below.


Unwrapped about 40 mins later (the chunky thing is some mushed-up banana we used in place of eggs).


Nice!




This one was burnt AND gooey at the same time. Still tasty inside!

We had another nice night (our coolest night, which was GREAT), and then packed up early the next morning:

Cleaned up.


Finding a big slug.


Good-bye to the bunny mama around our cabin!


Playing at the park back in Cloquet after a 90 min drive.


It was "double cheeseburger day" at Gordy's Hi Hat, so we all had that!
(And the kids shared 2 malts, and some fries, and some curds.)


Flags from burgers!


Quiet ride home!

We're already planning what we should do next summer!!

p.s. On the day we got there, we drove 300 miles over about 5.5 hours (to Lake Vermilion, to Bear Head Lake, to Ely, and back to Lake Vermilion). And over those first 3 days, I had nearly 80,000 steps! (27,824 Monday including a long run; 20,289 Tues; and 31,283 on Wednesday hiking around the mine, walking to some fishing, and hiking around Lake Vermilion = 79,396 steps.)