Good-natured contests take place throughout the Rendezvous. Upper left: Rugged Voyageur Contest winner Shawn Phillips of Minneapolis completed the course in 1.17 minutes. Above: Young Jack gave it his all in the competition. Left: Little Nissa gave fire starting a try—with a little help from her friends.
Grand Portage National Monument’s Rendezvous Days 2015 was another massive success with nearly 2,000 visitors attending the event with approximately 300 re-enactors at 142 sites on the historic grounds during the weekend.
The event has consistently featured a musical theme over the years and the festivities this year included tunes from the monument’s very own bagpiper Jeremy Kingsbury and fiddler Carrie Dlutkowski, along with folk singer Rodney Brown from Thunder Bay, various re-enactors in camp, Over the Waterfall, and Grand Portage’s Stone Bridge Singers who opened the event on Friday morning.
Visitors to the event were treated to a wide range of activities including lacrosse matches, tinsmithing and blacksmithing workshop opportunities, and classes on period sewing skills, sausage making, Ojibwe-style fingerweaving, birch bark canoe building and repair, and 18th century paper marbling and glass beads of the fur trade.
The weekend also included contests and games for re-enactors and public and children and adults alike to test their skills of emulating the different aspects of voyageur life during the late 18th century, along with opportunities to paddle birch bark canoes.
Camp Booshways Karl Koster and Steve Veit shared the results from the weekend’s contests.
2015 Rendezvous Days
Contest Winners
Magic Bead Hunt Winners
August Klessig and Jonathan Hansen
| Yoke’s | on You | – | Men’s | |||
| 1 | Shawn | Phillips | 56 | lifts | ||
| 2 | Colton | Cheney | 52 | lifts | ||
| 3 | John | Hayes | 41 | lifts | ||
Top: Runners take off in the 25th annual Rendezvous Days Run-Walk. Left: A previous director of Grand Portage Health Services, Michelle Backes-Fogelberg, returned for the celebration. Above middle: Health Services honored Irene Deschampe, one of the founders of the popular Run-Walk. Above right: These runners are sporting T-shirts with the special 25th anniversary design.
| Yoke’s | on You | – | Women’s | |||
| 1 | Sadie | Libal | 40 | lifts | ||
| 2 | Saskia | Michalenko 34 | lifts | |||
| 3 | Sandy | Gimpl | 31 | lifts | ||
| Paige | Merwin | 31 | lifts | |||
| Dainty | Voyageur | Pentathlon | ||
| 1 | Sandy | Gimpl | 1.07 | minutes |
| 2 | Kristin | Merwin | 1.16 | minutes |
| 3 | Bret | Dial | 1.17 | minutes |
| Rugged | Voyageur | Pentathlon | |||
| 1 | Shawn | Phillips | 1.17 | minutes | |
| 2 | Corey | Morse | 1.18 | minutes | |
| 3 | Robert | Jagodzinski 1.27 | minutes | ||
| Fire Starting | Competition – | Men’s | ||
| 1 | Randy | Baustert | 8.44 | seconds |
| 2 | Corey | Morse | 10.94 | seconds |
| 3 | Eric Cline | 12.90 | seconds |
| Fire | Starting | Competition | – | Women’s | ||||
| 1 | Noelle | Walters | 13.31 | seconds | ||||
| 2 | Nicole | Odegaard | 13.81 | seconds | ||||
| 3 | Paige | Merwin | 20.75 | seconds | ||||
Throw the Dough – Adults
1 Robert Jagodzinski
2 Mike Ackerman
3 Kevin Davison
Throw the Dough – Children
1 Ava Palmberg
2 Amelia Bonnet
3 Nissa Jagodzinski
Players come from far and wide every year to participate in the Grand Portage Rendezvous Days Softball Tournament. The first place team, pictured here, was Neighborhood, a team from Canada. Taking second was the Seasiders and third was Big Red Army. The Seasiders also took the award for Best Sportsmanship. Winning Men’s MVP was Joe “Jig” Deschampe and Women’s MVP was Susan Kakamo.
Fans needed umbrellas in the stands during the wet and wild Old Timers Game on Friday, August 7. The Old Timers played the Women All Stars and won. One player commented, “It was the best game ever!”
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