February Winter Excursion 2007 (Part 4 of 6: The Temperance River)

(Click HERE For Part 1 of This Series)

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MMMM. Coffee.

(Photo By Pat S.)

We went to the "Java Moose" in Grand Marais that morning. All was good except there was just one thing missing from the experience: a Starbucks across the street. Oh well, maybe they'll get lucky one day soon.

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Afterwards we made our way to the Temperance River. We listened to some cool classical shit on the way there and i even riffed a little bit with my beautiful voice - to make that fuckin' classic shit even more kick-ass, fucking beautiful. And it did.

Well, after we parked we embarked on our journey along the temperance river. Not the way i wanted to go however. I wanted to go to the shore, but Mike and Pat had another thing in mind. We would first follow the river upstream.

The following pictures are of a small lake formed by the river. I think you can actually see it from the satellite image of the map i linked to up above for "Temperance River" - pretty cool.

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Michael urging us on:

(Photo By Pat S. - Click To Enlarge)

A view from inside the cavern:

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And another view...wait what's this? Looks like Mike and Pat have stumbled upon something interesting...

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Here is what they stumbled upon:

(Photo By Pat S.)

Why it's a cute little baby deer taking a nap in the snow:

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We tried to wake it up but soon discovered it wasn't really sleeping at all!

It was with the angels now. So in recognition of this and as something of a memorial, i had mike make a snow angel next to this cute little snow angel.

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Of course he did so reluctantly but, regardless of Mike's poor attitude, i'm sure the deer-angel, who is now taking sweet naps in heaven, still appreciated the gesture nonetheless.

By the way, in the picture a few up from this one, you can clearly see that mike has the numbers "666" written across the back of his jump-suit (EEEEEEEVIL!).

This explains, to me anyway, why he must have been so resistant to showing respect for the dead.

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Here is a pretty cool panoramic Pat took inside this cavern. The left is the ground, the center is looking directly up, and the right is the ground again.

(Photo By Pat S. - Click To Enlarge)

In contrast, here is my sorry attempt to portray where we were:

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Now my camera is pretty grainy - it's not as sharp as Pat's (excuse the pun - for those who know him) - but given even the graininess of my camera, some photos i took are pretty inexcusable. The one below is one example - i would have thrown it out completely - along with others if not for certain elements in it. For instance in this one i was able to capture a snowball mid-flight that Michael threw at me when i was trying to take his picture:

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Here is another glaring difference between our two cameras. the following was taken with my camera:

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And this one was taken with his, In the exact same spot:

(Photo By Pat S. - Click To Enlarge)

Well, while I was down there with Pat comparing cameras, consumed with embarassment by my relatively small pic size, Mike has already taken off - remember he was already throwing snowballs at me from above by this point.

So we headed out to go look for Mike...

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On our way out I took it upon myself to test the weight of the earth above me inside a small cave.

Yup, pretty heavy, I can't budge it.

(Photo By Pat S. - Click To Enlarge)

And here is pat after taking that photo now reasonably convinced that the ground above me can't be lifted by, even, my mighty strength:

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Here is where we were down below. In fact i took this picture from where Mike was throwing snowballs at me. I was somewhere near the center of this photo. The hole to the right, made by the falls went down to the liquid water that was still flowing about 10-15 ft below where i was standing. I made sure not to slip into that.

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Here's just a cool little bridge that we will soon walk over in our efforts to find Mike.
Not too hard since there are tracks to follow.

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And here is that same place with Pat in the Picture, taking a Picture.

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Now. To find Mike...

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