The Sabbath started off beautifully, and restfully. We woke up at our leisure, and sat around drinking coffee or, in my case, hot chocolate while we talked about God, and faith, and life. It was really lovely.

For services we had lots of hymns to sing, and six different sermonettes from the young men on the adventure with us. I sat in my hammock, swaying in the breeze and listened to God’s word. I’m not sure there is much better than that.

After our church services some people napped, others waded out into the clear waters of Lake Makooda for a soak, a couple of folks grabbed their fishing poles and dropped a line into the water. I had fished the evening before and caught two fish, both were too small to eat, but it was fun. I think fishing is a little like gambling, you know the next fish is just around the corner. I can see why people get addicted to fishing, you just want to catch that next fish.

In the evening we all gathered by the water so we could get some group photos and watch as a pretty heavy storm blew in. It was a beautiful storm, and we got some great photos.

We woke up early on Sunday to a brilliantly clear morning and beautiful blue skies. We packed our belongings, had a quick breakfast and headed back to our canoes for one last day on the water. It was windy. We thought for sure that the wind would equal rough waters, but the alcove on Sandy Point Lake was smooth and easy to navigate. From Sandy Point Lake we proceeded through a narrows into Crane Lake. Again, smoothly paddling the whole way… until we got into Crane Lake.

I wasn’t expecting a repeat of Wednesday, but that is what we got. Except this time, instead of just Lewis and me in a canoe, we also had Kevin Kenady (a super wonderful man who did a wonderful job guiding our canoe). The only problem with adding Kevin to our canoe is that our canoe was very heavy, and therefore sat very low in the water. It made every wave a little more treacherous for us. There were a number of times where I thought we were going to capsize. I was even more concerned than I was before because I had made the mistake of leaving my Frogg Togg on when I got into the boat. For those of you that don’t know, a Frogg Togg is a waterproof rain suit that you wear over your clothes. I had put it on in the morning to protect my arms and legs from mosquitoes while we were loading the boats. Since the water was pretty calm when we put in, I wasn’t particularly worried about taking my suit off. It wasn’t until I started imagining capsizing and my suit filling with water and dragging me down did I start to have serious conversations with myself on how I would survive that.

Clearly I survived. But that is not a mistake I will make again.

I love canoeing. There’s something very special about being on the water, about camping under the stars, about sitting around a camp fire. I am, in no way, shape, or form, an adrenaline junkie. I very much prefer the calm waters; hearing my oar dip rhythmically in and out of the water, taking deep breaths of fresh air, watching birds swoop down to the water. The intense conditions we encountered on this adventure were unexpected (for me, at least), and challenging, and while I wouldn’t wish to encounter them again; I am grateful for the opportunity to grow, to challenge myself, and to learn what I am capable of.

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We woke up early on Tuesday morning, excited to get started on our adventure. We piled into vans and cars with all of our gear and seven lightweight Kevlar canoes (and one plastic canoe). We were dropped off at the Little Indian Sioux River, off of Echo Trail, and we had our first portage (where you carry your canoe and gear over land to get to the next body of water). I’ll include screen shots of the route we took, along with the maps that we used to navigate the waters.

The Boundary Waters Wilderness area is pristine, and the rules for entering the waterways are designed to keep it that way. Only nine people are allowed in a group, and only a certain amount of groups are given permits per day. This meant that we had to divide into two different groups. We had an odd number, so we had eight in our group.

On this first day the weather was pretty good, the waters were calm, and we made it to our first portage in good time, our first portage was from Upper Pauness Lake to Lower Pauness Lake; it was a short paddle to our second (and last for the day) portage, Devil’s Cascade. The terrain is not terrible and there’s a beautiful overlook of the gorge, but the mosquitoes (like most of the boundary waters area) were a nightmare.

If you’re considering making this journey I have several mosquito deterrent recommendations; these bad boys are huge and they can (and will) bite through clothing, but every layer is helpful. If you do nothing else, wear quick dry pants and a long sleeved shirt; it won’t stop the buggers, but it might slow them down a smidge. And if you have time beforehand, douse those things in permethrin. You definitely want a hat of some sort, those dorky dad fishing hats are probably the best option. Then you want to put a mosquito net over the hat. This will protect your face and neck from getting bit while you’re carrying your gear over portages. I wore work out gloves to protect against blisters while paddling, but they were pretty good at protecting my hands from getting bit as well.

Back to the trip. At the end of devil’s cascade I attempted to make our peanut butter/tortillas for lunch whilst fighting off the mosquitoes. There was peanut butter everywhere. It’s a great, lightweight option for food, but you need to plan ahead and have them made up before you get in the canoe. I’ll talk more about food recommendations in an upcoming blog.

We made it to our camp site and got our tents set up. Unfortunately, I allowed myself to get dehydrated and I spent the rest of the evening sipping gatorade and trying not to vomit. This left the set up of camp to everyone else; Lewis has a lot of really great attributes, but organization isn’t one of them. Things ended up being a bit chaotic and we didn’t get as much accomplished as we would have hoped (we have planned discussions each evening to help us focus on leadership and God, this was cut short due to mosquitoes and poor planning). But the main physical things got accomplished.

These are the things you need to do to set up camp. First, get your tents set up, if you’re going to have bad weather you want to have cover until it’s passed, and it will keep you from getting soaked. Second you need to secure water. It’s not really safe to drink water directly from the lakes, especially on the shore, so you take a canoe out at least 200 feet and fill containers (we had collapsible jugs) to filter water from. Lewis and Kim took this duty and in the midst of filling containers they capsized. Both were fine, they just had to swim the canoe back to shore. In the meantime we were going to start a fire, but all of the wood we could find was wet and we discovered that no matches were put in our mess kit. Fun.

We did have a fire starter… somewhere, but we couldn’t find that either. Thankfully the other group was at the campsite on the other side of our island, so Lewis took off through the woods to find them, and hopefully matches. After eating (which I did not do, see nausea above) and cleaning up our dinner dishes, to protect ourselves and our food from bears, we either had to string your bags off the ground in the trees, or float it out in a canoe; we chose the latter. So two people had to canoe out at least 200 feet, towing another canoe with all the food and trash; we anchored the food boat and then left it in the water, to be retrieved in the morning.

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