Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, Taking Amber to Amber Lake, August 15-22, 2015

We had such a good time last year in the Boundary Waters that I was ready to go back before we even got home. So this year we planned a full week with more travel than our first trip. After considering a number of routes, we decided to take our daughter Amber to Amber Lake. Here's a video and slide show I put together of the trip.

Roche-A-Cri State Park, Friendship, WI, July 24-26, 2015

Rock outcropping at Roche-A-Cri

A few weeks ago, my wife asked if I wanted to go camping over the next few weeks, and I responded that I would prefer to go to the backcountry or at least to some places we've never been. Her search found Roche-A-Cri State Park in Friendship, WI. After looking for it on the map, I became a bit concerned because it seemed to just be a tiny spot of green along the highway near a small town, but it turned out to be a pretty nice park.

Roche-A-Cri State Park was basically established to protect a 300-ft rock outcropping and Native American petroglyphs. The park has about 5 miles of hiking trails, 41 campsites and a creek that supposedly has decent fishing. The rock mound supposedly was an island in Glacial Lake Wisconsin about 15,000 years ago. Despite the park's small size, I recommend a visit and would camp there again.

July 10-12, 2015, Wyalusing State Park, Bagley, WI

Wisconsin River

We spent the weekend car camping at Wyalusing State Park, which is at the confluence of the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers. The park offers beautiful views of both rivers from the bluffs above, has about 14 miles of hiking trails, multiple playgrounds and has a signed canoe trail through the sloughs and down the Mississippi River. The camping accommodations are fairly typical of a state park, and there are two campgrounds. The Wisconsin Ridge Campground overlooks the Wisconsin River and has some nice views, but the campsites are wide open and right on top of each other. The Homestead Campground is, by comparison, more secluded and wooded. However, most of the sites are small and close to the campground road.

July 3, 2015, Escanaba and Lost Canoe Lakes, NHAL State Forest, Boulder Junction, WI

I don't normally blog about day trips, but there is not a lot of information about canoeing in this area and not all of it is accurate, so I thought it would be worth writing about our experience paddling in the National Highland American Legion (NHAL) State Forest. 

As a compromise for missing out on Independence Day festivities last year, we settled on a mixture of day paddling and tourist activities in Minocqua, WI. After poring over maps of the area over the winter, I decided I wanted to try paddling/portaging around Lost Canoe Lake, partially because of the name and because there are a number of canoe campsites in the area. The NHAL offers a number of canoe routes (pdf) with both reservable and first-come campsites. 

June 15-18, 2015, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Bryson City, NC

Deep Creek

Since we've gotten back into backcountry camping, my wife and I have been wanting to take a real backpacking trip. We've done a few walk-in state park sites with our daughter, but we know from our day hikes that she's not up for more than a few miles without major complaints and delays. We made plans to leave her with my mom in Chattanooga as soon as school ended for the summer while we backpacked in the Smokies. Despite having lived a good portion of my life in Eastern Tennessee, I had never spent any time in the backcountry of the the Smoky Mountains, so I got pretty excited about the idea.

Bryson City, NC

I kinda wanted to stay away from the busy areas of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, TN, so I decided we would try to find a fairly easy loop on the North Carolina side. The Deep Creek area offers a number of campsites fairly close to the trail head, and there are a number of opportunities for loop routes. After much contemplation, we chose a few campsites that would make up about a 20 mile loop, and our plans were set. 

May 23-25, 2015, Sylvania Wilderness, Watersmeet, MI

Amber and Lorraine at the campsite marker

If you haven’t been to the Sylvania Wilderness, I highly recommend it. It’s nice to have a long weekend to enjoy the outdoors, but we often find the easy-to-reach destinations in south-central Wisconsin to be extremely crowded on holiday weekends. Fortunately, the Sylvania Wilderness is not overly crowded as we found out last Independence Day weekend, and you can reserve campsites in advance, ensuring you get a spot. Last year, we had a wonderful site (Birch) on Clark Lake, and you can read the trip report here. I heard good things about the eastern side of Sylvania, so I thought we should give it a try. I wanted a site on High Lake, but it seems neither of them are reservable, so I booked Ermine 1 on Mountain Lake.

By the end of last season, packing for camping trips was practically second nature, and I really didn’t even need a list. It’s amazing how quickly one can fall out of habits, so I was glad to have handy the lists I made over the last couple years. We packed up early in the week in anticipation of the trip and loaded everything up on Friday night so that we could make an early start on Saturday morning to avoid traffic, amazingly, we managed to get on the road by 6am.

Crooked Lake Boat Landing

The drive up was uneventful, and we managed to miss any heavy traffic. We made a pit stop at McDonald’s for Amber and me to get something to eat, and we stopped again at Sylvania Outfitters to pick up fishing licenses. I wasn’t really planning on fishing but Amber insisted. Anything to make her trip more enjoyable is worth it, so we brought some minimal fishing gear, which Amber promised to portage. After checking in at the Ranger station and watching the video, we headed to the landing to have lunch before getting on the water. Up arrival at the landing, we were bombarded by mosquitoes, so our lunch break was quite short.

Loon on Crooked Lake

The paddle through Crooked Lake was nice, and the weather was pretty much perfect. The breeze on the lake offered a nice respite from the mosquitoes. Crooked Lake is aptly named, as it is quite irregularly shaped with wide and narrow sections turning in all directions. Fortunately, it’s fairly easy to navigate as most of the bays and sections are small and don’t leave the opportunity to stray too far off path. We managed to find the portage with little difficulty, and were pleased with the nice landings and short distance to Mountain Lake. I was a bit surprised that

Crooked Lake

most of the campsites were not easy to see without paddling right up to them, so I wasn’t able to really tell how many were occupied or get an idea of what they looked like without stopping. Nonetheless, we found our site with no problem, but we did find it occupied with about a zillion mosquitoes.

I think this was the most mosquitoes I have ever encountered. Thankfully, we brought the head nets, but we didn’t bring any chemicals. I really wish I would have brought the Thermacell to give it a try because there was hardly any breeze at our campsite on Saturday, and I have heard the Thermacells work great on calm days. Anyway, we were at our home away from home and had to make the best of it, so we put on the head nets and started about setting up camp.

Portage between Crooked and Mountain Lakes

Mountain Lake

GPS track for day one

We had to twist, bribe and threaten Amber to do camp chores, but she finally relented and “helped” with some of her chores. In the short term, it certainly would be easier to just do all the chores ourselves, but obviously we have a responsibility to instill some values and work ethic into our offspring. At the moment, though, I wished we could have left her to play video games with Grandma. Fortunately, the tension passed, and we all were able to enjoy ourselves.

Headed out to fish

I got a chance to take Amber out fishing in the boat, which was an accomplishment in itself because she has been expressing quite a bit of anxiety about fishing from the boat. After a quick attempt to fish from the densely forested shore, she quickly saw the merit of being out on the water and seemed to forget about most of her anxiety. We paddle around and fished a little, but we didn’t even get a nibble, nor did we even see a fish in the water despite having good visibility. First, I don’t really know what I’m doing or what to throw out there for which kind of fish, and there are

pretty strict regulations on all the lakes except Crooked in Sylvania. All hook barbs must be crimped and no live bait (or even scented bait , if I remember correctly) is allowed. Also, Amber gets nervous when we get close to shore as I guess she thinks we’re going to “crash”, so it’s difficult to fish the shoreline and weeds when she’s worried about getting too close. Anyway, I think she had fun.

One of the highlights of the evening for me was tortilla pizza! I don’t know if these would taste as good at home, but oh my, it’s a little slice of heaven in the woods to have a double- or triple-pepperoni pizza with crushed red pepper. If you haven’t tried this on your trips, you really should. If you need more info, post a comment and I’ll be glad to talk about it. Mmmmmm.

 
The downside to pizza in the woods during a mosquito hatch is having to eat walking around so the mosquitoes don’t carry you away. After having enough, I built a fire, and it really helped give us a break from the bugs. The fire pit area at Ermine 1 was not flat, and the ground was somewhat soggy, so it made sitting around the campfire in the Helinox a bit of a challenge as the legs kept sinking into the ground. I tried putting flat stones under the legs, but with the slope it made for unstable sitting. I think I might have to give the tennis/wiffle/racquet ball trick a try. Anyway, we enjoyed the fire until bedtime when we were back on mosquito fighting duty. They were bad enough that there was a constant buzz around the tent all night long.

Ermine-1

I mentioned that the fire area was not flat, and neither was pretty much any part of Ermine-1, which I guess brings me to a review of the campsite. All the sites I’ve seen at Sylvania are pretty spacious, and Ermine-1 was no exception. Still, we had trouble finding a flat spot for the tent. There is some area near the water that would probably be my choice but the rules at Sylvania prevent from setting camp right on the water. I thought that I read that Ermine has numerous tent pads, but I would have to disagree. I guess you could find a number of flatish spots for 1-person tents, but event the best spot we could find had us sliding down our pads throughout the night. There are, however, numerous trees for hammocking, so any hammock campers will not have trouble finding trees from which to hang. The real challenge with the topography of the site was climbing the mountain (ok, so I’m exaggerating) to get to the throne, especially after the rain. The canoe landing was OK, but not great. The shore has a number of trees and is slightly elevated (a foot or two) from the water in places, so it limits the landing opportunities. When we first landed, we picked the place that looked the friendliest, but when I stepped out of the canoe, my foot sunk into some muck. No big deal, but we’ve certainly encountered nicer landings.

GPS track of our day trip

The plan for day two of our two-night trip was to day trip over to High Lake, about which I had heard many nice things, especially relating to the water clarity. After having a bacon and hashbrown breakfast, we prepared for the day trip by packing some snacks and the water filter. If I had known we would be gone so long, I probably would have wanted to pack the stove and a meal, but we obviously weren’t going to starve. The day trip involved 6 portages for a total of 306 rods (0.96 miles) and 6 lakes for a total of 7.6 miles. I started out feeling strong and energetic, but the royalex canoe just kept feeling heavier and heavier. By the last portage, I was having a bit of trouble heaving it over my shoulders and my back was getting sore. Come to think of it, this is exactly how I felt on last year’s Boundary Waters trip.

High Lake was really nice, and the water had a beautiful color. I had heard that you could see deep down, but the sun was right overhead causing reflections that made it difficult to see into the water except in the shade. In the shade, we could definitely see how nice and clean the water was. We decided to stop at one of the campsites, Raccoon, to check it out and to filter some drinking water. The site was fairly nice, but like Ermine-1, was not very flat. There was a nice flat tent spot pretty close to the fire pit, which is where I expect most people setup their tent. The real charm to Raccoon, in my opinion is that it is a prime swimming spot. It has a nice gradual slope into the water with a sandy, pebbly bottom. We didn’t swim as I was not about to expose my skin to the mosquitoes, but I imagine as summer progresses, the bugs will get better.

 
We didn’t make it back to camp until about 3 o’clock or so, and we were tired and hungry. Lorraine started on our meal while I took care of the gear and got a fire going. We decided on beef stroganoff dehydrated meal we (ok, Lorraine) made at home. Lorraine also dumped a bag of freeze-dried peas into the beef, and it was a big success. Even Amber was going on about how good it was and wanted seconds. I was so happy to see her eating so well. I hate that we typically have to throw much of her food away (ie, we have to pack it out) when we camp. We capped off dinner with re-hydrated cinnamon apples. Note that Lorraine picked up the peas and apples at Target, so it might be worth looking around your local big box stores for lightweight camping food options.

Dad and daughter

Ermine 1

After dinner, the wind picked up and we got some sprinkles, and amazingly, the mosquitoes nearly disappeared. Finally, it became easy to completely relax and take off the head net, which I was finding to be repressive. Gradually, the rain picked up, and it ended up raining pretty hard throughout the night and into the morning. Fortunately, it slowed down for our paddle out, but packing up a wet tent and tarp is never fun. Plus, some of our gear got wet because the slope of the tentpad resulted in us pressing into the foot of the tent, exposing it to rain. I feel like I need to repeat the lesson to myself (and my handful of readers): don’t shove your clothes into the corner of the tent, especially when rain is expected as the corners are often where water will come in.  Perhaps, I should take Cliff Jacobson’s advice and use an innie.

We were completely swarmed by mosquitoes, got rained on for about 12 hours straight, didn’t catch a single fish, and we still had a great time. In all, I think we traveled about 16 miles over two days. The highlight of the trip was watching and eagle and a loon interact on the paddle out. We suspect the eagle may have gotten to the loons nest or maybe the loon was just warning others about the eagle, but it was way cool to watch the eagle swoop down near the loon and hear the loon call out in response. I look forward to our next trip to Sylvania, and I think it’s a great warm-up for our upcoming Boundary Waters trip. I hope you’ll leave a comment or send me a message.

May 8-10, 2015, Buckhorn State Park, Necedah, WI

Our family backpacking

We asked my wife what she wanted for Mother’s Day, and she said, “Good behavior.” Well, since we weren’t sure we could oblige her, we promised to fulfill her second wish of hiking and camping. Since she and I are planning to spend a few nights backpacking in the Smokies next month, I figured it would be a good time to get a trial run of some new gear and to help us solidify our packing list. There are not a lot of good backpacking options in southern Wisconsin, but Buckhorn State Park offers some walk-in sites that are far enough away from the car to make it feel like a backpacking trip. Unfortunately, none of those sites are reservable. Nonetheless, we decided to hope for the best and arrive as early as possible on Friday evening.

Campsite 4 at Buckhorn State Park

To our surprise, we found that all the sites we had previously marked as desirable were open, and we would virtually be alone as none of the sites were taken in the cluster including the one we chose, Campsite #4. Many of the sites, including #4, are right on Castle Rock Lake, which is somewhat unique for southern Wisconsin state park campsites. The site was listed as a 0.7 mile walk, which I never verified because I kept forgetting to stop the GPS upon arrival at the site, but it seemed about right. We quickly organized our gear, strapped our packs on and made our way to the site. Amber did surprisingly well and was happy with her pack weight of about 11-12 lbs. My pack weighed in at 29 lbs including a gallon of water and most of the food, and Lorraine’s weighed 25 lbs before she snuck a couple last minute items, including a two water bottles. Hopefully, we can figure a way to cut some weight off of her pack before our June trip.

Small beach at our campsite

 Anyway, we quickly arrived at camp, and I set up our new Zpacks triplex, rigged a tarp around the picnic table (and I do mean rigged), and hung the food bag to try to keep the little critters away. Fortunately, there are virtually no bears to worry about here, so we just needed a deterrent from raccoons. After I set up the tent, Lorraine and Amber made up the “beds” and got everything ready for sleeping. Darkness fell before I had a chance to collect firewood, so I opted not to have a fire as I really didn’t want to rummage around for wood in the dark. Our site was on the west side of the peninsula with a pond on the east side. The pond was full of active carp jumping around all throughout the day and night, and after nightfall, the frogs around the pond became very vocal making for a loud chorus of critter calls and splashing. The lack of fire coupled with the lack of comfortable seating led me to bed before ten o’clock where I was able to soak up the sounds from our small island of isolation.

Zpacks triplex

Overall the Zpacks triplex worked out fine, but I left camp that weekend without the warm and fuzzy feeling I had about it prior to the trip. I think most of my disappointment has to do with how tight it was for the three of us. Also, limited site selection left us on a slightly uneven spot with me on the low end, which seemed to lead to my pad getting squeezed against the door. I don’t really fit that well on a 20” pad, but it is doable. I had practiced setting up the triplex, which is essentially a trekking pole-supported tarp tent, at home, but I probably should have practiced setting it up on uneven ground. Although the site was fairly nice, there were not a lot of ideal tent pads partly because of some precarious looking branches and partly because of a large section of land being marked off limits to allow for restoration. I also had not counted on sandy soil, but fortunately I brought extra stakes including some MSR groundhogs, which proved sufficient. However, I don’t know how well they would have withstood a rainstorm in the loose soil. I think I might add a couple snow stakes to my pack in the future. Despite some disappointment about being cramped, the tent held up fine and I feel a little better about its durability and hope we’ll like it better as a two person tent on our upcoming trip.

Saturday morning I woke up before 7 with some soreness, so I decided to go ahead and get up. I had heard Lorraine shortly before that, but I guess I missed her before she went off for a hike. There aren’t a lot of trails at Buckhorn, but she did get a chance to take a quiet walk, which included seeing various critters, including a porcupine. Maybe there is something to be had from getting up early! After Lorraine’s walk, we had a backpacker’s breakfast of instant oatmeal with dehydrated fruit and nuts. I also nibbled on a little bit of beef jerky.

We brought the canoe, which we left on the car in the parking lot, and decided we would get in a paddle before eating lunch. Of course, Amber objected, but we didn’t pay any attention. We had originally considered paddling to our site, but I was worried that we might have trouble convincing Amber to get back in the boat after being comfortable, and strong winds and storms were predicted for Sunday morning. I didn’t really want to get stuck portaging the canoe back to the car, so we decided to launch from boat ramp E, which is north of Hwy G.

GPS track of our paddle

The paddle was somewhat uneventful, but we did see a number of birds and some jumping fish. Amber even said she loved canoeing while she was paddling in the seat next to her mom. She claims it’s because she could touch bottom with her paddle, so maybe her insistence that she doesn’t like canoeing is related to anxiety. The area is a bit confusing with numerous small islands and twists and turns, but I brought my phone with the Backcountry Navigator GPS app and a compass, although I didn’t have much of a paper map for the area. Even if one were to get lost there, the area is not that big, so I wasn’t worried. Once we navigated out of the islands, we made a loop under the Hwy G bridge to Amber’s amusement. We were surprised by dozens of active swallows under the bridge, so I admit it was somewhat entertaining.

After our 3.5 mile paddle, we packed up and headed back to the site for lunch. Amber had picked out $8 Mountain House mac ‘n’ cheese on our Cabela’s opening-weekend shopping trip, so we had that, along with rehydrated taco meat, shredded cheese and tortillas. It wasn’t bad, but the mac ‘n’ cheese had an excessive amount of sauce that we had to pack out. I must say that I like our homemade dehydrated food much better than the store bought stuff. 

Sunset over Castle Rock Lake

We promised a trip to the playground after lunch, so we hiked back out to the trailhead, where Amber begged to drive the two blocks to the playground. I had planned to walk but figured I would take advantage of some air conditioning, although it wasn’t really that hot. She played for probably about an hour, and after she couldn’t get the adults to join in anymore decided she had enough. So we made our way back to camp. Too full to eat supper, Lorraine and I abstained and Amber had some more oatmeal. I collected enough wood for a decent fire, so we were able to enjoy that, but it’s honestly not nearly as enjoyable without camp chairs. I think I might have to work the Helinox back into my pack. We also were able to end the evening with a nice sunset across the lake.

On Sunday, we were back on the road before 8:30 in an attempt to beat the predicted rain. We decided to stop and have a Mother’s Day breakfast at Buckhorn Cafe. It wasn’t bad, but it seemed to take forever. 

Overall, it was a nice trip, and we couldn't complain about the weather. I definitely think we will come back but probably not during the peak season as not having neighbors was one of the highlights of the weekend. Although we did hear music late Sunday night, we mostly had the feel of  a backcountry campsite with most of the convenience of front country camping.