We headed north from Silver Bay looking for our next find from freecampsites.net. North of Tofte, MN, we found the Oxbow Rustic Campground off Sawbill Trail. There were four sites at this campground and we lucked out at site #2 – room for the trailer, a picnic table and fire pit at the main site with a lower area that had an additional fire pit and a lovely wooded area with trees for hammocks. A very steep trail led down from there to the Temperance River where we could listen to the sound of the river moving over rocks. The river was quite easy to ford, so we enjoyed exploring our new backyard. The first couple of days were quite windy, so Mike first set up a tarp to block wind while we enjoyed a fire and later we set up tarps over the hammocks that we were planning to sleep in the first night. Unfortunately, each time Mike climbed into his hammock, the tarp seemed to loosen and he soon figured out that one of the trees he was tethered to was cracking near the bottom of the trunk. Into the trailer we went for the night.
The forest around us seemed to be in a fairly active state of decay – lots of trees fighting for survival in a (boreal?). This made for some not so solid trees (see Mike’s hammock situation), lots of moss and ideal conditions for mushrooms. As he was out gathering firewood, Mike was befriended by Minnesota Mark, who spends a fair amount of time foraging in different parts of the country. He was nice enough to share some of his knowledge and some chanterelles and lobster mushrooms with us, which we enjoyed that night with dinner.
Mark inspired us to head out hunting in the area for the two kinds of mushrooms we now knew were available in the area and that we thought we could identify. We were spurred on by the fact that Mike found a big lobster near where we set up our hammocks. We bushwhacked through the area around our campsite and across the road without much luck, but as soon as we took the easier route of moving down the campground road and checking out easy to get to areas, we found lobsters galore. We filled a bag and made ourselves stop gathering when we had so many we weren’t sure what we would do with them.
We had almost 4 pounds of mushrooms and were happy to see Minnesota Mark again to show him our haul. He and his friend Sal joined us at our site for a bit and we loved hearing about his experiences. Another lovely time meeting and learning from new people. We really enjoyed foraging (and finding :). We had a few meals from our haul.
Not Edible 🙂 
Our haul 
Cooking up the mushrooms! 
Almost one pound! 
This campground is in the Sawtooth Mountains and we have learned that a good cell signal is best found by the shore. Once you venture inland into the mountains or beyond, a signal is hard to come by. That being said, at the Oxbow, we were able to put our cell booster to use. Mike attached the booster to Scarlet’s TV antenna so we could raise it fairly high when we are stationary. When we put the antenna up, I could get enough signal to use my phone if I needed to, although it was pretty spotty.
We are trying to get into the habit of making use of our time near civilization – download maps books, research where we are heading, check the weather forecast, etc. We are also learning to bring our 7 gallon Aquatainers in the car when we are out and about. It’s never a bad idea to fill up on water when a source is available.
We made sure to stop by Temperance River State park a couple of times to take advantage of their artesian spring water.
The Tofte General Store and Bottle Shop got a few visits from us as we drove by – they provided us with some different backpacking fare to try out on our next outing as well as our much-needed half and half for coffee.