GRAND MARAIS, Minn. — It was cold enough here Tuesday morning to see your breath. The black flies were swarming in the woods; the blood-sucking hordes have exploded because of the incessant rain. And gas prices hit $4.13 a gallon in downtown Grand Marais.

Yet here was Bob Magnuson, 69, cheerfully picking up his Boundary Waters permit at the Forest Service office. He had just driven nine hours from his home in Manistique, Mich., for a seven-day wilderness canoe trip. He had a grin on his face. He was happy to be here.

"Four-dollar-a-gallon gas definitely makes a difference, but when you have a passion for canoeing, you don't think about it that much."

He paused.

"Actually, you're a little better here. It's $4.24 a gallon at home."

That's the spirit, Bob.

Grand Marais is an outdoors tourist town, but there weren't many long faces around town Tuesday, even with numbing cold fog and withering gas hikes.

Maybe it's because folks who play and live here regard these things as mild nuisances that don't get in the way of the fun stuff — like casting a fishing line to walleye or preparing for a canoe trip with your 16-year-old granddaughter (as Magnuson was). It's summer — well, late spring up here — and summer is for the bracing outdoor life.

I stopped inside Buck's Hardware, which was selling the $4.13 gas, hoping to find some bad news. At least that is what the media is supposed to do when it comes to spoiling summer fun.

I found owner Buck Benson in the back room. He was smiling. I pounced on him about gas prices, the slumping economy and black flies — in that order.

"Oh, I don't know. I think the gas thing was more dramatic in the 1970s," he said. "Gas stations were allocating gas. There were big lines. I don't know if many people remember that."

If local tourism was down, it was because of the rainy weather, Benson said. And he wasn't worried. "You know, summer is still two or three weeks behind up here," he said.

So what about the black flies? Benson acknowledged he was mowing his lawn the day before and got chewed on pretty bad.

He thought a moment about the little blood gorgers and found a note of optimism.

"You known, when the bugs come out, the fishing gets pretty good," he said.

There was a crash in the next aisle; one of his customers, Becky, had dropped a bag of grass seed. She was in full repair mode. Her house and property had been flooded last week when a storm dumped five inches of rain in Grand Marais. The storm flooded downtown and ripped up a handful of county roads.

Last year at this time, the region had been hit with one of Minnesota's worst forest fires in history.

"Fires and floods — what will be next?" Becky said with a laugh. "Pestilence?"

"Black flies," Benson and I said almost in unison.

Next, I headed over to North Wilds, a local newspaper owned by Shawn Perich and Amber Pratt. I've known Perich for years as an ardent cynic. A few weeks ago, he was on a steelhead fishing trip in Canada where gas was $5 a gallon.

"OK, so it costs you $70 for a day of fishing. What else are you going to do?" Perich said.

For most of us, it means we go fishing or canoeing — gas prices be damned.

But don't forget the extra can of mosquito dope.

You'll need it.