By Herman the Mouse: alias Tracey Wasson
Hi there! I’m Herman the Mouse. I live in the Mini-School storeroom and from time to time I go out on a trip with Big D and some of the Mini-School kids. I just got back from a canoe trip down the Namekagon and St. Croix Rivers. I was there from October 6th through the 10th with Paul Peterson, Rob Imker, Rob Schmid, Mike Roufs, Cory Kreslins, Dana Hitchings “Pillow”, Brian Pengelly, Stacy Neils, Tracey Wasson, and of course, Big D. It was a great trip. The last time I got out of the storeroom was on Big D’s winter trip last year. I almost froze and, besides that, Howdy Doty ran over my tail with a cross-country ski! What a klutz.
Lester and her friend (former Mini-School aide) Joanne Elliott-Storlie helped drive us all up to the Namekagon River and shuttle Big D’s truck and the canoe trailer to our finish point, Big D’s cabin on the St. Croix River near Grantsburg, Wisconsin. The crew’s last civilized breakfast for the week (I like goatmeal just fine, but the kids complain all the time) was at Country Kitchen halfway to the Old Stinnet Bridge on the Namekagon River (near Hayward, Wisconsin) where we started in the canoes. I kept getting stuck in personal packs, mostly squashed by Pillow’s pillows and huge sleeping bag, except for one night when I got lucky and slept in a food pack and had a great midnight snack on powdered eggs.
On the first day Mike Roufs and Rob Imker seemed to be having a contest with Brian and Tracey to see who could hit the most rocks in the rapids. I was really scared! The water is freezing at this time of the year and I’ve heard that there are big, ferocious, hungry northern pike in the Namekagon River! I’ll never forget how my uncle Erasmouse got eaten by a lake trout in the BNCA on the 1982 Mini-School canoe trip. What a horrible tragedy! Mike, Rob, Brian and Tracey got to be better paddlers, along with everyone else, as the trip went on, but for the first couple of days I was sure wishing that I was in Big D’s canoe.
The first night camping at Springbrook was fun. We had a nice campfire and Big D cooked up a great beef stew for everyone. I ate pretty good picking up scraps that people dropped on the ground. Everyone seemed to sleep well at night. I don’t blame them. The canoeing seemed like hard work.
As we canoed along, Doug helped all the kids learn the names of trees, birds, and other animals. I got pretty panicky when we got real close to some bald eagles, and a bit nervous when we saw mink and a coyote, but the porcupine, beaver, deer and osprey didn’t bother me much at all.
The mornings and nights throughout the trip were cold, but the group almost always had a good campfire going. I could hide under a log near the fire and stay warm. The days were really nice — sunny and calm. Tracey Wasson was the weather girl and did a terrific job.
Schmidhead and Arby (Cory reminded people of John Arbuckle from the comic strip Garfield) seemed to get along pretty well if they weren’t canoeing together, and it was neat to see how everyone in the group included and accepted Dana “Pillow” Hitchings, who was new in Mini-School. In fact, the first thing Pillow did in Mini-School was go on the trip–he’d never even been to a class. This was a Mini-School first. It had never happened before. He got his nickname, Pillow, because of the two pillows he brought along on the trip. His huge sleeping bag took up a whole Duluth pack. Big D let him get away with it because he was new and because there was only one portage on this whole trip. You can bet it’ll never happen again though! Two pillows! My goodness, Big D doesn’t let anyone else bring any.
Tuesday night when we camped at Whispering Pines campground, Brian, the Beagle Scout, showed everyone the big and little dippers, the north star, some planets and some other neat constellations. Also there was a big full moon every night which was beautiful. I laid-low, though, because a lot of animals that eat mice are out and about during the full moon when they can see better.
After this long a time of being with Doug, some people, especially Rob Imker, got into Big D’s songs and when the canoes were together Doug would sing and others would join in once in a while. Big D has some neat songs, but I couldn’t print all the verses in Com-Mini-Cations!! I know most of them because of all the Mini-School trips I’ve gone on.
One thing I know Stacy and Tracey didn’t like were the plastic open air toilets at some of the campsites. They were always afraid one of the guys was going to sneak up on them and take their picture when they were using them. On Wednesday we camped on an island on the St. Croix. The plastic “growler” would have been welcomed by the girls then.
The most relaxing night of the trip was Thursday. After paddling all day through the roughest rapids of the trip, the crew was happy to get to Big D’s cabin. Then, to everyone’s surprise, Big D took them all to a health club in Grantsburg for showers and to a nice restaurant for dinner. I heard everyone say that the Black Russian hamburger was the favorite. After that everyone returned to the cabin for a warm, kicked-back evening.
Everyone sat around a campfire in Big D’s yard, and the big treat for me was when Big D came out with popcorn–my favorite food. I was able to really “pig out” just scurrying around people’s feet and picking up what they dropped.
When I was out around the campfire I heard a nearby owl but I hid under the porch at D’s cabin and luckily it never found me. The gang stayed up pretty late that night, except for Schmidhead who had a headache. Big D’s breakfast in the morning with coffee seemed to please everyone, too. After breakfast everyone cleaned up Big D’s cabin, loaded up the trailer and truck, and headed back to Minnetonka. Back in the Duluth pack for me.
All in all, I’d say the group was a good one, and except for a couple of evenings, basic morale was high and not very tense. I would have liked to see a little more teamwork at times, but it was pretty good too. Maybe on the next trip I’ll eat even better.