Monday to Saxon Harbor

Monday morning, we got Gracie all buttoned up to move a short distance (30 miles) east along Lake Superior to Saxon Harbor.

Leaving Kreher campground in Ashland

A video of Gracie leaving the campground:
 

We stopped at Walmart on our way out of town to get some shopping done, and stayed in the parking lot for a little while so I could participate in the memorial service for my IBM friend, Doug, without losing signal during the service.

A picture and story about Doug -- he and I were teaching a class in London back in 1996. Dwayne was along too, and our friend, Bud, had come over to tour around England with Dwayne while I was working. On one of the mornings...

Dwayne and Bud were excitedly planning their day...

Dwayne's write-up

... while Doug and I were pouting because we had to go to work....

(Picture scanned in from the London trip photo album several years ago.)

It just seems way too soon to lose Doug. I had the opportunity to talk with him a few times over this past year after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He was unfailingly positive and accepting of God's will in his life, even if it may not have been what he would have chosen. I will miss my friend.

We arrived at Saxon Harbor Marina and Campground in early afternoon. We found the dump station (it was down in the marina area rather than in the campground) and got our waste tanks dumped (we elected *not* to do that at Ashland as sometimes agitation in driving allows the tanks to dump more completely), and then found our reserved campsite.

The campground is up the hill from the harbor, but we have a view of Lake Superior from our site.

We are on the end site on the east side of the upper loop...

There really are other RVs here, even though you can only barely see a red truck which is in the site next to us.

We are backed up to a small valley/drainage area and then trees.

This area underwent a very damaging flood just a couple of years ago. If you look at the website (https://www.ironcountyforest.org/saxon-harbor.html), there are some pictures "post storm 2016". The Google Maps satellite view of area (link here) does not show the campground at all -- it shows only trees where we are currently parked. The campground that is visible in the Google map satellite pictures was destroyed and it was rebuilt further uphill. We have our walkie-talkies that have access to a weather alert system tuned to warn us of any flash flooding (the event happened on July 11, 2016 - we don't want to experience a repeat in July of 2021!).

Information about the damage and recovery can be found here: https://dma.wi.gov/DMA/wemnews/2021wemnews/readyy210609