Lake Vermilion Resort Association

On the drive between Tower and Cook  this morning on County Road 115, which runs along the south shore of Lake Vermilion, I was stopped by a timber wolf crossing the road.  I was thinking about work and not paying much attention to my surroundings when the truck about a quarter mile in front of me suddenly slowed down.  I saw an animal crossing in front of it - too large for a dog, but not walking like a deer.  Immediately it dawned on me that it was a wolf.

I am partial to wolves.  Several amazing photos of wolves are in my living room.  For some reason I feel a connection to them.  As I drew near, I pulled over to the side of the road to get a close look.  I was very grateful to the wolf, which paused a few feet from the shoulder, turned and looked at me in a perfect pose.  Of course by the time I grabbed my cell phone and zoomed in, the wolf had turned and sauntered into the cover of the trees. 

As I put my phone down, I saw that the couple in the truck I had been following had turned around and come back to look at the wolf.  We smiled and waved, sharing one of those priceless moments of nature that don’t come along very often.

The recent news about finding the spiny waterflea in Lake Mille Lacs reminds us how vulnerable our waterways are to the threat of invasive species.

Here are links to several resources:
News release on spiny waterfleas in Mille Lac

Sportsmen’s Club of Lake Vermilion on preventing introduction of invasive species

Protect Your Waters website

In May of this year, the Lake Vermilion Resort Association partnered with the Sportsmen’s Club of Lake Vermilion to provide an invasive species prevention training.  Several volunteers and resort owners were taught how to inspect boats - what to look for, where to look, and how to pass the information on to boat owners so they can check their own boats as they transport them from one body of water to another. 

The Lake Vermilion Resort Association remains committed to protecting Lake Vermilion for future generations.  Please help us in our efforts.

Each year the Sportsmen’s Club of Lake Vermilion (SCLV) sponsors a loon count on the lake.  This year’s counting is set for Monday, July 15.  The following is an excerpt from the SCLV’s website:

Lake Vermilion has always been known for its large population of loons. To lake residents and frequent visitors, the loon has been something special. One never tires of the haunting cries in the early morning or late evening hours, the sight of a loon cruising the open waters of the lake with his head below water looking for a meal, or the special scene of a loon chick — or maybe two — riding on a parent’s back to keep warm.

In the early 1980s, news of large loon die-offs off the coast of Florida had the Club worried. They could have been “our” loons. So in 1983 the Sportsmen’s Club began keeping count of the loons on Lake Vermilion every summer.

The task was quite large: thousands of acres of water, many bays and islands, and a bird that wouldn’t sit still long enough to be counted only once. But if enough volunteers could be on the water on the same day, at the same time, an accurate count could be taken. Today, the Lake Vermilion Loon Count is the longest running, single lake count of common loons anywhere in the United States.

For more information and a chart of the loon counts since 1983, visit the SCLV’s website here:

http://www.sportsmensclublakevermilion.org/htm/loonct.htm

June 6 and 7 was “Take-a-kid fishing” weekend in Minnesota. There is also a “Take-a-kid ice fishing weekend” in February. These are just two of the programs the Minnesota DNR is sponsoring to try to help reverse one of several disturbing trends in outdoor recreation (fishing, hunting, recreational boating, wildlife viewing, etc.).

Here are the figures for Minnesota for the years 1996-2006:

• State park visitation (same parks) - down 12%
• Resident anglers licensed in Minnesota (aged 16+) - down 16%
• Resident hunters licensed in Minnesota (aged 16+) - down 9%
• Recreational boating in Minnesota - down 15%

And Minnesota is doing well compared to the rest of the nation!

This trend is across all age groups.  Different reasons have been identified: 

1. For older adults - accessibility is becoming a problem.
2. For people in their 30s, 40s and 50s - work and family pressures limit time and money available.
3. For younger adults - other competing interests and lack of skills and knowledge of the outdoors.

The trend among youth, according to a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation:  kids 8-18 now devote, on average, nearly 7 hours a day to sitting in front of various electronic media.  As a result, they are spending 50% less time outdoors than their parents did.  That leads to one of the reasons given for the lack of participation by young adults - lack of skills and knowledge.

The best way to help reverse this trend is exposure to the outdoors.  If you have children and/or grandchildren, think about ways to get them involved and interested in nature and the recreational opportunities it provides.  Turn off the electronics (not just the TV - think about the things that are taken along when you leave the house - cell phones, laptops, MP3 players, handheld games, DVD players in vehicles).  Help kids learn how to fish or camp or even just find interesting things on a hike.  If you absolutely do not have the time and resources, their are camps, groups like the Boy and Girl Scouts, Campfire, etc.

The future of outdoor recreation in the US is in our hands.

The Soudan Underground Mine State Park is one of many unique and fascinating attractions you will find in the Lake Vermilion area. You can tour 2 sites underground here, as well as above ground exhibits. And as a bonus…you don’t even need a Minnesota State Park sticker to get in!

The first underground site is the historic tour. This year marks the 125th anniversary of the first shipment of iron ore from the Soudan Mine.  When the mine ceased operation in 1962, US Steel donated the property to the State of Minnesota for education purposes. On the tour, after a brief introduction, you will put on your hard hat for a ride in the “cage” to the 27th level.  Once you have descended 2,371 feet, you will board a rail car to be transported to the last and deepest area mined. The 90 minute tour will take you back to the glory days of iron ore mining on the Vermilion Iron Range. Another bonus for a warm day - it remains a steady 50°F  underground.  Don’t forget a jacket or sweater!

The second underground tour is of a high energy physics lab. I can’t explain it very well (physics was never my strong suit) but the tour guides can! Basically, scientists from around the world have been working at the Soudan Mine for 25 years trying to answer questions about the universe, such as: Is matter completely stable? What is the nature of the fundamental forces? Can we identify Dark Matter? Learn about the neutrino beam from Fermilab…see the MINOS (Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search) detector…learn about CDMS (Cyrogenic Dark Matter Search) and its continued search for WIMP (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles).

For those less adventurous souls, you can still see lots above ground, such as the dry house, drill shop, crusher house, engine house, and an open mine pit, or enjoy nature on the hiking trails and picnic area.

The Soudan Underground Mine State Park will also be hosting several programs this season, including ”Geocaching 101″ and “Batty About Bats”.  For dates, times, and information on these and other programs, see the calendar of events under the “Things to See & Do” section of our website.

And for more information about visiting the mine, see “Attractions”, also under the “Things to See & Do” section.

This story comes to us courtesy of Ed Tausk of Vermilion Dam Lodge:

Bella, Ed’s 3 year old yellow Labrador Retriever, has had a difficult and amazing life. As a pup, Bella was a favorite of the guests and staff. She picked up commands quickly and was using her natural talent as a retriever for grouse and duck hunting. Unfortunately, around the time Bella turned one, she was struck with the often fatal illness of Blastomycosis, called simply “Blasto” by most. Blasto is a spore like disease that can get into an animals lungs through inhaling or sniffing the ground, or even through open cuts.  Once in the lungs, the mold grows fast and spreads throughout the organs.  Unless treated quickly, the dog usually dies. 

As in many cases, the mold attacked Bella’s eyes and caused severe pressure, leading to permanent damage to the nerves that control the eye sight.  Bella went from being a normal sighted dog to total vision loss within a month.  She stayed on medication for six months, and is now cured of the Blasto.  Ed took Bella to several top vets and had her eyes tested, but the prognosis was always the same - she will never get her sight back.

In spite of this, most resort guests have no idea that Bella is blind.  She gets around with no trouble at all, running full speed behind the resort atvs and slowing down when they do, following kids over 100 feet out onto the dock and sitting down right at the edge, and still retrieving anything from a stick thrown into the lake to grouse, using her front paws as her eyes.

One story Ed tells…A while back a lady was staying at the resort who fell in love with Bella. The lady would bring treats for her each day.  One morning, the lady came into the lodge with treats looking for Bella, who was still upstairs in Ed’s apartment. She said she would come back later because she was going to take a walk along the river to the bottom of the falls (about 1/4 mile from the lodge).  The lady had been gone about 20 minutes when Ed brought Bella down to the lodge. Bella picked up the lady’s scent and wanted to go outside.  As soon as she was out, Bella tracked the lady’s scent all the way down to the bottom of the falls and found her. The lady was amazed, but said she knew Bella was looking for her because she watched Bella work her way down the path with her tail going very fast, and using her nose along the trail.

Ed hopes that Bella’s story will give hope to people whose pets have failing eyesight and are worried about what the quality of their lives will be.

As the days get steadily warmer and the snow dwindles, thoughts turn to “soft” water activities like fishing and boating.  In the meantime, however, we need to get through this period of the year where the ice is melting.  There are many factors that contribute to the rate of melting, but I will not get into the science of it here.

Each year resorters and other property owners watch anxiously watch the ice conditions on their part of the lake.  Wind can pile up ice, easily taking out docks or supports.  Even rocks and boulders along the shoreline can be moved by the power of the ice.

You can watch the progress of the melting of Lake Vermilion on our webcams:

www.lakevermilionresorts.com/webcams

If you’d like to view a chart showing all the dates for ice out since official records began in 1910, continue here  -

Continue reading ‘Ice Out!’

As author/editor of this blog, I would like to start by sharing a little about my first experiences with Lake Vermilion.  I came to the Lake as the result of a devastating event (for a 16 year old).  Near the end of my 10^th grade year, the parents of my best friend announced that they had purchased a resort in Minnesota and the family was immediately moving from their Ohio home.  Our 12 year long friendship was suddenly going to be separated by 900 miles!  Her parents, I think in part to help keep my friend from declaring all out war on the family, invited me to visit.

That summer I spent about 3 weeks at the (long-gone) Isle of Pines Resort.  The following year I stayed for the whole summer to work at both the resort and at their second business in Tower that had been purchased during the winter.  I greatly enjoyed my visit that first year, but it was during the second summer I fell in love -  in love with Lake Vermilion, with Tower, and with my now-husband of 35 years  -pretty much in that order J.

I can still vividly recall snapshots in my mind of that summer – Big Bay completely awash  in moonlight; trolling around the island dragging a Lazy Ike on warm sunny afternoons to catch a few walleye for the Friday night resort fish fry; trips to Tower by boat; camping in the woods behind the resort;  stopping on the way home from work to get a 5 cent “baby root beer” at the drive-in (because we each only had 5 cents!); catching a rock bass off the dock and immediately fileting and frying it for a fish sandwich for lunch; spending evenings in the lodge listening to the adults having a sing-along around the piano while us teens played ping-pong, cards or shuffle board and got to know the week’s resort guests better; picking blueberries for a super fresh pie…so many great memories.

The summer of 1972 found the song “Rocky Mountain High” at the top of the charts.  I related the sentiment of the song to my experience, and it wasn’t hard to change a few words around to make it my own.   Cue the music - “It’s the Minnesota, Lake Vermilion high…”.

I invite you to come and start your own love affair with Lake Vermilion.