BWCA (Boundary Waters Canoe Area)

This year for our family vacation we decided to take a trip up to the Boundary Waters.  Dale, Elaine and Mark have been up there several times over the last few years.  The Boundary Waters is a chain of lakes that boarder Minnesota and Canada.  It is a place where you can do some true camping.  Before we left I had been struggling with a sinus infection, so I had Dale give me a blessing.  The blessing was a source of comfort at points on this trip.  I was assured that we would all be safe and create lasting memories. 

We left at 3:30 am to get to the outfitters by 9 am.  The morning was beautiful and the lake was glassy.  

We rented 4 canoes for the trip and started at Sawbill Lake.

All the gear we needed was loaded into the 4 canoes.

Once loaded up we were ready for an adventure.  We did portage once, which consisted of docking the canoes, unloading, carrying the canoes to the next lake and all the gear then loading back up.

Jared caught his first bass about 5 minutes onto the next lake.

Jared caught a second bass a few minutes later, but it was too small.  It was flopping around by his feet while he was freaking out.  Normally not a big deal, but in a canoe with no one able to reach him to help it was a little tense, but funny for a few minutes.  Dale finally pulled up beside him and was able to grab the fish.

Jared was finally willing to touch his fish once it died and stopped flopping around.

During our first night we had a rain storm come through.  We had a couple wet sleeping bags but things seemed ok.  It made for a misty morning of fishing.

One's hair must always look presentable even when camping.

Poor Tate, he was the most diligent at fishing but never caught anything.

Erin was the crawdad whisperer.  She caught about 10 crawdads.  It was fun to hear my 15, almost 16 year old, daughter say over and over again how much fun she was having.

The rain continued most of the day.  We caught Jared walking around like this and Elaine leans over and whispers "should we tell him he has a hood?"

At one point Dale got very excited about the small river running off the tarp.  That was water we didn't have to purify, so we hurried and filled the water bottles.

What this picture fails to show is the massive swarm of mosquitos that took shelter under the tarp too.  It also doesn't show the 3 inches of water pooled on the ground under the tarp.  It was a small swamp.

Elaine decided after a few rain storms coming through that it was time to make herself a rain poncho.

More fishing.

In the late afternoon it cleared up enough to take the canoes out and for the boys to do a bit of swimming.

Dale and Mark went and scouted out the next days activities of cliff jumping.

We had plenty of time for games.

Just after we finished dinner another storm we had been hearing blew in.  We had heard the thunder for a few hours and had high hopes that it was going to blow over.

No such luck, we took refuge in 3 of our 4 tents to wait it out.  After huddling in our tent with us for 1 1/2 hours Mark decided he was going to head to his tent to read and go to sleep.  He came back a few minutes later.  His tent, which he was sharing with Erin, had blown over and all their gear was soaking wet. So we did the only thing left, Dale and I zipped our sleeping bags together and shared with Mark.  Tate and Elaine did the same with Erin.  Boy it was a great night sleep. I went to check on the boys, Grant, Joe, and Jared.  They were all sound asleep.  Their tent was in a puddle of water and you could feel it slosh around under the tent.  Luckily we have very good tents and they stayed relatively dry through the night.  The storm lasted for hours.  At points the wind was horrible and the rain came down in buckets.  We would count the seconds between lightning and thunder, and at times it was very close.  There were times that I wondered what on earth we would do if we needed to get out, we had no cell signal and  canoed in 3 miles and portaged once.  

I had to include a picture of the top of the tent.  We saw a lot of this on Thursday night.

The next morning when we finally stumbled out of bed "well rested" we assessed the damage.  Everything was muddy and wet.  Most people had damp sleeping bags and clothes.  As we attempted cooking pancakes over the camp stove we held a family meeting.  The general consensus was to go home.  Nobody wanted to suggest it and be the spoil sport, but everyone was happy to go.  We packed up muddy wet tents and gear and loaded up the canoes.  The lake was very choppy and it was quite windy, so it took a few of us considerable time to get out.  On the drive home we crossed over a river and it was a raging torrent of muddy water from the storm.  Many of the areas on the 20 mile dirt road leaving had huge ruts in them from the storm.

We were all very happy to sleep in our beds that night while it rained yet again.  We did indeed create many lasting memories that are fun to laugh about now.