Going on a Moose Hunt!

[We now return to blogging D-Monk's North Shore trip ... before the onset of bronchitus]

Sunday afternoon featured another favorite pasttime for D-Monk and his Beloved ... a North Shore Moose Hunt!

Although not as plentiful as in Maine, there are moose to be seen in the extreme north of Minnesota. D-Monk and his Beloved love to seek out the moose and shoot them with their digital camera. They are wonderous creatures ... graceless water-donkeys with great horns wandering through the vast areas of hyperboreal vegetation.



Moose are easier to find in the winter. They like to lick salt off the roads and the best time to see them is near dusk. So at about 3:00, D-Monk and his beloved set off up the Gunflint Trail to see if any moose were to be seen. We saw four!!!!

But ... this was not the whole story.

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There they were, D-Monk and his Beloved, hiking on an isolated road, in January, in northern Minnesota, near dusk. The temperature was about 12 degrees and the hikers were utterly alone. It would be at least a twenty minute hike back out to the main road. Then, hopefully, they would see somebody.



So how did they get hear? All alone in the isolated wilderness with no cell phone coverage or other way of calling for help? What had drawn them to this place?

They had seen two moose on the Gunflint Trail, but wanted to see more. D-Monk felt that a trip down one of the back roads might do it. They turned off on a road that led to Iron Lake.

On the side of the road was a sign which read:



"Minimum Maintenance Road! Travel at your own risk."

Seeing that he and his Beloved were traveling in a soccer-mom styled, suburbanite mini-van, D-Monk chose to ignore this warning. After all, everyone knows that a mini-van can go anywhere!



D-Monk and his Beloved drove about a mile into the minimum maintenance road and then took a turn off into a camp ground. The snow seemed a little deep, so D-Monk decided they better turn around.

"Oh, @&*%!"

Too late! The van was stuck.

D-Monk and his Beloved tried to push the van out. He turned the front-wheel drive back and forth to try to get traction. They rocked the van forward and back. They even tried using the floor mats to create extra traction. No luck. The van was stuck and two people were not enough to get it out. There was no cell phone signal, they were miles from anywhere, and the sun was setting. Oh ... and it was cold outside!

They decided they better hike out. No one would pass where they were, but there was fairly regular traffic out on the Gunflint Trail.

So D-Monk and his Beloved hiked the minimum maintenance road back out to the main highway. They still had to wait 20 minutes before a car came by, but when it did, it had two hearty Minnesota fisherman who eagerly agreed to help them out.

Thirty minutes later, D-Monk and his Beloved were back in their mighty mini-