Because no one was going to be in Rock and neither of us wanted to go camping across the lake from camp, we decided to head out to Grand Island with Dad and Teri for the weekend. Grand Island is located just off of Munising in the UP (www.grandislandmi.com). It's approximately 23 square miles and it part of the Hiawatha National Forest. Most of the island is owned by the US Forest Service but there are a few chunks of privately owned land. Teri has a cabin on a piece of land that is on a 99 year lease from the USFS right on Echo Creek and also owns a small parcel on the "Thumb" of the island.
We were a bit rushed to get out the Munising to catch the hopper, but Joe did a wonderful job of getting us packed and ready to go while I was at work. Dad met us at Williams Landing and loaded our stuff into the "Ghost," which is an old utility truck they keep on the island for quick transport. It's about 4 miles from the landing to camp, so it's nice to not have to haul all of our stuff.
Once we got settled we decided to go fishing on Echo Lake, which is one of the largest beaver-made lakes in the world. Teri's Dad keeps a boat at the Echo Lake landing for fishing with a little 4 HP motor on it and my Dad told us to take their poles down and hop on in. When we were about 20 feet off the shore Joe informed me that he'd never actually operated an outboard motor, but soon got it started anyway. We motored about 3/4 of the way across the 1 mile long lake trolling the whole way. Joe asked if I wanted to keep trolling or if we should "risk turning off the motor." I told him to turn it off, as my Dad had assured us it would start up with some effort.
About 15 minutes later it started to rain and the wind had pushed us almost all the way to the north shore, so we decided to head back to camp. Joe began to work on getting the motor started and soon we realized that it wasn't going to start! So I said well, if we're going to be stuck out here, we might as well fish. Suddenly, I got a bite! Moments later we hauled the biggest fish I've ever caught into the boat - a northern pike! I was pumped, but Joe didn't seem that impressed. But it should be noted that it was raining, he hadn't had the chance to do much fishing, and I began singing a little song that went like this:
"I caught a great big fish, a great big fish, a great big fish! I caught a great big fish and you didn't catch anything!"
Hey, I was excited.
At this point we realized we might as well row the boat to the other side of the lake. The problem was we only had one oar. After about 10 minutes of me paddling and getting us nowhere, Joe took over and paddled us all the way back to shore stopping only when I said "Honey, get the net!" as I hauled in 2 more pike. (Note - I thought these fish were HUGE, but it turns out they were just over legal.). By the time we made it back to camp my Dad was super worried (He'd come down to the landing but couldn't see us, and while he knows I'm a strong swimmer he was concerned) and we'd missed dinner but we'd had a blast. We got something to eat and settled in to play some cards.
The highlight of the next day (other than the awesome breakfast we had) was digging for wild leeks. Leeks are a cousin of onions and they grow like crazy on the island. So we went off the find them, and boy did we ever! We went through the woods and found hundreds and hundreds of leek clumps like these:
So what you do it take a spade and dig up around the clump because if you try to pull them up they snap right off. The root system on these things is crazy. After filling two huge garbage bags with leek clumps we went back to camp to clean them up. When they've been cleaned they look like this:
Joe and I ended up with two big ziplock bags full of leeks - that's a TON! So far I've made about 1/3 of them into stock that I put in the freeze and made Tortellini Leek soup with another 1/3. The soup I made equates to about three meals for Joe and I, so I froze a bunch. Here's how I made the soup:
I sauteed the leeks and a little bit of onion in some butter. When they were caramelized I de-glazed the pan with some chicken brother and added some pepper. Then I added some baby spinach until it was well wilted as well as some crumbled bacon. I added more chicken brother and some water before adding fully cooked three cheese tortellini. To serve I topped it with asiago, Parmesan, and Romano cheese. It was awesome. I got the idea from Teri, who's an excellent cook.
Today I'm probably going to make Potato Leek soup in a similar way, but this will be a cream based soup. I also found a recipe for leek and wild mushroom wine sauce that's to be paired with Salmon. Yum!
Sunday night we played some card and sung songs by the campfire while Dad and Teri played the guitar and on Monday Joe and I took the four wheeler over the Trout Bay, which is were we camped last year after reading "The Face In The Rock" by Loren Grahm. It's the story of a famous Grand Island Chippewea and I highly recommend the book. Here are some pictures of Trout Bay from last year:
All in all we had a great weekend. We're hoping to make it back out there a couple more times this summer - once to camp on Trout Bay and once to hang out with Dad and Teri at the cabin. We're both in love with the island.
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