Forest History Center

The day before we leave (break camp) is usually spent cleaning, doing laundry, putting things away, last minute grocery shopping, tanking up the truck. Did all that by 11am this morning except did grocery shopping and fill up truck around 3:30pm. This morning after I got back from the laundry we decided to go to the Forest History Center which is an educational center dedicated to the logging business at the turn of the century. Located here in Grand Rapids. We have been at other centers where there were reenactments of life on the Frontier (Virginia's museum), one for mining iron ore (Chisholm's museum), and also went through the museum in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (Calumet) dedicated to the copper mining. This center showed how logging camps were set up and how people lived. If there were any women in the camp, it was the cook and her 3 cookies (helpers). The cook was the highest paid person ($50 a month). And the lowest paid person was a road scupper - who cleaned up the poop of the horses off the ice roads where the sleds of lumber went along - didn't want those sleds to get mucked up from the poop, right? In each building (with the exception of the crapper) a person was there telling you how they did their job in that building. Buildings where the loggers slept, where they ate, where they did their 'business' - a 4 holer!, how the horses were taken care of, the office where the records were kept - how much work a logger did on a daily basis, a forge for the blacksmith, the filer shack where the person responsible for keeping the blades of the saws sharp, where the cook kept their food supplies and the kitchen, the sled that took the prepared meals out to the men at noon (they got to eat all they wanted 3 times a day), etc. All these jobs were 7 days a week, the only day off - Sunday - was usually the men who took care of the horses since the horses needed a day of rest. Otherwise - chop/chop. Remember that these men worked from late fall to thaw of spring in 30 degrees below zero, snow, and ice. In 1900 there were 800 logging camps in Minnesota alone.

Tomorrow morning we leave for Devils Lake, North Dakota, about a 5 hour drive west. Nice thing is we don't get on an interstate. We will stay in Devils Lake (on Spirit Lake Indian Reservation) for a couple days to get rested and do some sightseeing before moving westward again. We are glad to be moving on, we certainly understand a whole lot more about the 10,000 lakes and the boundary waters/wilderness of Minnesota. Definitely a fishing/boating/outdoor area destination if you are so inclined.