Advanced Training

I took an advanced training for Master Naturalists on the North Shore this week.  I spent Tuesday night at the Carlton Forestry Center. We left from there on Wednesday morning on a coach bus.  "Be prepared for rain," they said.  And I was.  I brought boots, rain pants, rain coat and umbrella.  But I didn't wear it all the first day.  And it poured rain on Wednesday.  My tennis shoes were so soaked they are still wet today.  We toured an experiment in Cloquet about global warming.  They have specific plots of earth warmed 1.8 degrees Celsius and two more plots warmed 3.6 degrees Celsius.  One of each plot is in the sun and another in the shade.  So far the results show broad leafed trees are thriving while spruce and birch decline.  They even included invasive buckthorn in the plots.  I had to physically restrain myself from pulling that buckthorn.  Buckthorn seems to like the warmer future too.  After that we toured some of the damage done in the 2012 flood at Chester Creek.  Then we headed,  in the pouring rain, to this Master Naturalist capstone project where they are building a bench with human forms on the backrest.  In the future children will be able to sit there and feed chickadees with their bare hands - an experience sure to ignite the passion of nature in our youth.

We visited sugarloaf cove nature Center and took a long hike in the pouring rain.

Lucky for us igneous rocks are not slippery.

Sugarloaf Cove has a huge diversity of rock varieties.

Sugarloaf Cove is beautiful.

Lake Superior has a very small tide - only a couple centimeters.  But Lake Superior can have a seiche - a bathtub effect.  Wind or weather can cause a surge to travel 8 hours across the lake and come back again 16 hours later.

I want to come back and visit during the gales of November.

Walking out to sugar loaf peninsula in the rain was a work out and an ankle strengthener for sure.  This is a good place to learn about the rift valley, lava flows, metamorphic and igneous and sedimentary rocks, and geology.  My brain was stuffed full of new information.