July 6, 2012

We left camp and drove into town to see the Smokey the Bear statue.  It was built in 1954.  My brother Elton called to tell me the nursing home called him and they wanted to take mom to the hospital across the street by ambulance.  He told them he could come push her across.  A couple of weeks ago mom got a new pair of shoes and they rubbed a little blister on top of her foot.  The nursing home has been treating it but it is not getting any better.  It is red all around it.  The doctor’s assistant came to see it today and she called the doctor.  He wanted her to go to the hospital.  Elton called when they got back to the nursing home and told me they were giving her some antibiotics and an order for warm compresses three times a day.  They used a magic marker and drew along the red ring.  This is so they can tell if the ring gets larger.  They didn’t want to keep her in the hospital because of a chance of getting an infection or pneumonia.  The doctor will look at it again on Monday and if it’s not better, they will put her in the hospital for intravenous antibiotics.

We drove to Ely, Minnesota and got a campsite at Superior National Forest, Fall Lake campground.  This campground has electricity, except now.  The storm that came through Walker on the 4^th of July also came through Ely and it caused trees to fall on some of the lines.  The campground has been out of electricity since then.  We will be here until Sunday morning and it probably won’t be fixed by then.

It rained on us all the way from Walker and the temperature was in the 60’s today.  Tomorrow the high is expected to be in the 70’s so it should not be too hot for us to sleep without power for the air conditioner.  Since Jim has the Federal Golden Age Passport the campsite should have been $13 but since the power was off they only charged us $8.50.

The small town of Ely is next to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.  It contains over a million acres, many lakes, and is the most visited wilderness area in the U.S.  Since it was raining the town was full of people who would otherwise be out boating or canoeing.  We went to town and had a beer and French fries at Boathouse Brewing, then across the block to the VFW for another beer.  Afterwards we looked for geocaches and found four -- now we have found a total of fifty.  We went back to the Casita, I fixed supper and we turned on the generator for two hours to charge the Honda generator.  We watched some TV while the generator was on.