Side trip: PANIC! on Lake Superior, or The Near-Wreck of the Old Honda Accord (600')

The legend lives on from highpointers on down
of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee.
The lake road, it is said, never gives up her dead
when the skies of mid-August turn gloomy.

The car was the pride of a hiker named Stoat,
loaded down with her worldly possessions.
As mid-size sedans go, it was bigger than most
with driver and Pokemon well-seasoned.

They were headed southwest from that old raven's nest
Eagle Mountain, a hill they'd been climbing
As they turned from the forest to highway they saw
they'd got down with impeccable timing.

Highpoint #30: Eagle Mountain, MN (2302')

I woke to find several of that mosquito swarm stuck between my tent's raincover and the mesh shield. I extricated myself carefully, then whipped the raincover off, sending several (I hope) to their deaths. Then, quickly, before the survivors could return with reinforcements, I stowed my tent and set off for the state line.

I blame the pond beside my campsite.

The long road to the Land of Clouded Waters was draped in fog that morning. It thickened as I drove, then gradually lifted--and yes, that's exactly how fog dissipates, rising inch by inch from the ground with its threshold held level until it joins with the overcast ceiling.

While stopped at a road-work site, a bald eagle flew over my car. They must love this place, I thought, with all its lakes and bogs and sportsman-stocked ponds full of fish. The woods are popular with human hunters, too. Along US-53 I saw a sign for “www.deerpee.com,” a local business that sells exactly what you'd think it does (for use as an attractant). How did they extract it? I wondered as I passed. Some kind of elaborate deer-diaper-funnel apparatus, or the old-fashioned way, by hand? And do the (presumably captive) source-deer know their urine is being used to lure fellow members of their species to their deaths? That's some sci-fi horror stuff right there.

At Trego, WI, I passed beneath some scary dark-looking clouds. They weren't quite ready to burst (it was still well before noon), but for a while they seemed to be following me north. Realizing this, I punched the gas and left them behind.

Low Point: Great Lakes Region (600-246')

...But first, a quick spin around the Great Lakes. There are five of them, as I'm sure you recall from grade-school geography:

Formed by glacial activity at the close of the last ice age, these lakes cover 94,250 square miles of land and contain 21% of the world's surface freshwater by volume. This water flows first into storm-driven Lake Superior,