Kingfisher wrote on Jun 9^th, 2010 at 4:06pm:

Last year Memorial Day weekend finished a trip with Yellowbird. We went to check in at customs in Ely and found the officer was out of the office and the posted instructions were to come back another time. Well, it was close to closing hours for the custom office so we went into Ely, had dinner, spent the night in a motel, picked up a purchased canoe at VNO and then returned to the customs office early the next morning when they opened. We found several other groups there and had to wait about a half hour to be "readmitted" to the United States of America. Absurd? You be the judge.

Yes.  That does seem absurd.  Last year, my son and I exited on July 4.  We arrived Ely customs around 3:00 pm to find a note on the door informing us that the agent was in Ely helping with the parade.  At least he was kind enough to leave his cell number which we called.  He said to hold tight and he'd be back in about 20 minutes.  We waited and were soon on our way back to Ohio.
We usually spend our first night back in Duluth or Madison.  Not sure if we would have adjusted our plans to wait till the next day for customs as you did KF.  Would that mean we could be arrested/cited?  I'm guessing a call to Ely customs from Madison the next morning would not be received well.