Living on the Edge of the Boundary Waters

I’m so happy to live on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area at the end of the Gunflint Trail.  With the exception of when the wind blows or lightning strikes and we lose telephone service or electricity.   When we lose electricity we also lose our phones because they operate on an electrical system. 

     The nice thing about no electricity is that it is very quiet.  No refrigerator or freezers humming and not an electrical buzz anywhere.  It’s quiet until our neighbor gets his generator going and then it’s still pretty quiet.  We don’t have a generator so when the power is out everything is out. 

     Since we’re at the end of the road and about 80 miles from our electric company we know when the power goes out it will at least be out for a couple of hours.  Most of the time it’s ok to lose power but it can be a big hassle if it happens in the middle of a busy summer day. 

     We can’t issue permits, run the cash register or process credit card transactions when the power is out but luckily we have awesome guests who are patient with us.  Over the 4th of July Weekend our guests were terrific when we had to accept credit cards the painstakingly slow way because of no telephone lines.  Thursday night’s power outage didn’t bother our guests either. 

     I guess if it doesn’t bother our guests then it shouldn’t bother me either.  I need to learn to take advantage of the quiet time to either read a book, relax or take a nap.  Just one more benefit to living on the edge of the BWCA.