BWCA Little Indian Sioux North, EP 14, August 21-28, 2016

For our third annual Boundary Waters trip, we decided to do a more ambitious trip than our previous years and found ourselves rewarding with a challenging and beautiful trip. We took the LISN loop counterclockwise through Shell, Hustler, Gebeonequet, Little Beartrap and Loon lakes, adding up to more than 60 miles including the double portaging. We didn’t see much impressive wildlife, but we encountered some needed solitude and no obtrusive weather. I came back feeling recharged and still in love with the Northwoods, so I don’t think I could ask for much more.

Sylvania Wilderness, Watersmeet, MI, September 5-7, 2015

The Sylvania Wilderness is a small but beautiful Federally designated wilderness in the Ottawa National Forest with 18,000 acres of pristine lakes, old growth forests and spacious campsites. The campsites are available only by reservation either in advance or from the ranger station, so unlike the Boundary Waters, you can guarantee yourself a campsite even on holiday weekends. Having a reserved site on a lake without motor boats makes Sylvania an ideal holiday weekend getaway, so we reserved a site for Labor Day weekend. The sites were most interested in taking were either reserved or not reservable in advance, so I booked Perch 1 on Whitefish Lake.

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.

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.

August 16-21, 2014, Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness

Our family took our first trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Northern Minnesota. We planned a five night stay but left a day early to avoid predictions of rain and storms we heard from our weather radio. We had fairly poor weather, but as my wife exclaimed "A rainy day in the Boundary Waters is better than a nice day at work." We planned for a few different route options but ended up basecamping on Horseshoe Lake and taking day trips. We covered a total of about 30 miles between paddling and portaging and visited six lakes. Read on for more details about our trip or check out a slide show I put together of our pictures.

We left from the Madison, WI, area around 6am for what Google says is an 8-hr drive. We kept a nice pace for the first several hours of the trip with a quick drive-through stop at McDonald's in the Dells for breakfast. We made it to Two Harbors around lunch time and let Amber pick Subway for lunch despite many more interesting options off Hwy 61. Just after Two Harbors, succumbed by the views and a pedestrian bridge over the Baptism River, we pulled over at the Tettegouche State Park rest area to stretch our legs and take in the sights of Lake Superior. This is a really nice park, and according to the videos in the visitor center/rest area, there is a ton to do in the park, including camping, paddling and hiking. We walked across the bridge, went down to the river and lake, threw some stones and took in some sun and nice views. We explored the visitor center, and Amber coveted some of the toys, while I was thinking about getting one of the patches. We didn't buy anything at the time but used the toys as a bribe for good behavior. We ended up stopping here again on the way back to let Amber pick out a small toy as one of her rewards for cooperating. After an hour or so, we headed back on our way to the Gunflint Trail. There was major construction along the trail, so we had some delays. With a quick stop in Grand Marais for gas, we made it to Rockwood Outfitters around 4:30.

We checked in with Mike and Lynn and Rockwood for our stay at the bunkhouse. They really are great people and helped make for a smooth trip for us. Amber was enthralled with the bunkhouse and seemed more interested in hanging out there than outside by the lake. We managed to coax her out for dinner at the Trail Center, which I have heard a lot about from others who have visited the Gunflint Trail. Amber and a couple other patrons saw a fox across the trail, but Lorraine and I missed it. After dinner, Lorraine was tired, so she went to bed while Amber and I played cards and dipped a line in Lake Poplar. I was worried that I would have trouble sleeping because I was excited and not used to sleeping on a bunk, but I got a good night's sleep. I think I got most of my jitters out of my system in the weeks leading up to the trip.

Sunday morning, Lorraine coaxed Amber and me out of bed just after 6 am. I felt pretty stiff and tried stretching out my kinks but had no luck. After showering and navigating the chaos of packing our stuff and trying to sort out which miscellaneous items would stay in the car and which would come with us, we were ready to load the boat and get going. Amber stepped outside to an unleashed pit bull whose owners had no ability to control him. Unfortunately, we would run into it and its careless, disrespectful owners on the portages. The morning was misty and chilly, probably not even 50 degrees F, and there was a SSE wind at about 10 mph. We got on the water just after 8am.

The paddle across Poplar was uneventful, and we found the portage to Lizz with no problem. We took our time as we were figuring out our routine. All of a sudden something rushes past me, and I notice it is the unleashed disobedient pit bull. Argh!!! I ask the group where they are going, and they tell me Gaskin, which means they will be taking the same route as us. We decided to take our time to let them get ahead of us. Apparently, we weren't slow enough as we ran into the group again. This time another group with two well-behaved dogs were coming the opposite direction, and the pit was being entirely aggressive with them. Fortunately, the owners of the pair had control over their dogs and ordered them onward without incident. This pit even jumped in someone else's boat. Some people! Anyway, the thing that struck me most about the trip to Horseshoe was how crowded and muddy the portages were. We've encountered fewer people on some of our state park camping trips. Anyway, people we encountered gave us encouraging news about open campsites, some of which they had just vacated. We were told the best Horseshoe site was the one on the Eastern side of the Southern peninsula. It was taken by the time we got there, so we took the Western facing site on the peninsula. We arrived right around noon, and after a quick break, we set up camp. I had quite a bit of lower back pain for the paddle in and was worried it would put a dampener on our trip, but my back improved, although I could never get rid of some kinks I had in my shoulder blade. We would end up base camping here as we weren't very excited about packing up and moving in the wet weather we had.

Amber was excited to get to camp, as I promised her one of the two gifts I had brought along if she cooperated on our first day of travel. She couldn't decide if she wanted the game or the toy, but ultimately picked the toy. She was incredibly excited to find I had brought along a $15 3-in-1 Lego. It earned me title of "Best Dad Ever" for at least a couple hours. We built the Lego vehicles and played Uno for entertainment.

We had nice first day, complete with good weather. After we set up, I was laying on the landing rock to work out my back ache, when I was surprised by a visit from a Forest Service Wilderness Ranger and a guy from the Conservation Core shadowing her. They were checking sites for maintenance needs and asking for permits. After a pleasant chat, they left us to our day. Lunch was quesadillas with foil-packed chicken, which tasted like tuna. I don't think I want to bring this chicken again. Dinner was cheese and summer sausage. We took a paddle on the southwest arm of Horseshoe, and we went to bed without a fire because we were all tired. We traveled about 7.5 miles.

I slept until about 7:30 on Monday morning, which was about ten hours of needed rest. Breakfast was oatmeal, sausage and cheddar cheese. Amber ate two strawberry-flavored oatmeal packages, which is quite amazing considering she usually doesn't even finish one. After breakfast, we took a leisurely paddle around the southeast end of Horseshoe looking for critters. We also took the portage to Vista Lake without the boat and ran into the ranger and her companion, and amazingly, she found a wedding band at the landing. Unfortunately, they had no news of good weather in the forecast. We returned to camp for lunch and had tortilla pizzas for lunch. This is one of my favorite camping meals, and it's pretty easy to make. Amber opted for a bagel with honey. Later, the rain rolled in and was pretty hard for nearly an hour. I looked out the tent to see 1-2 inches of water around, and the bottom felt like a waterbed. Fortunately, we had no leaks and only a little moisture seeped through. Maybe Cliff Jacobson is right that we should put an innie in the tent. 

 The weather stayed overcast with occasional sprinkles, but it was pleasant enough for us to not be stuck in the tent or under the tarp. Amber dipped a line in the water from shore, and we took a paddle to get some more water to filter. She stood up in the canoe, making it obvious she's getting more comfortable in the canoe. Hopefully, her comfort will not turn into carelessness. Amber has been singing a lot, especially when she goes to the tent to play by herself, but when asked, she claims everything is lame and boring. We know better, and I've been catching her saying "This is fun." We played a bunch of Uno and built some Legos. Despite everything being wet, I built a fire. It took my constant attention for an hour or so, but I managed to get a hot fire to burn away the remnants of the last campers who left the site in a less-than-desirable state. They left uneaten crayfish with meat in the fire pit and shells from the crayfish and pistachios all around camp. The fire pit was full of fairly large, barely charred logs as if they couldn't keep the fire going or dumped their crayfish boil right into the fire before leaving. People are such pigs. I enjoyed the fire and went to bed around 11. We traveled 3.5 - 4 miles Monday.

I slept another ten hours until nearly 9 am on Tuesday. The morning was wet, dreary and foggy.I had visions of waking up early to go fishing while out here, but I love sleeping so much, and my camp bed is incredibly comfortable. Amber also slept in late, giving Lorraine some time alone to soak in the wilderness. We missed two eagles fishing, although with one nested across from our campsite we had plenty of opportunity to watch it. Still, Lorraine got the best of the show from them. Amber polished off an apple cinnamon and a strawberry oatmeal, but I just wasn't hungry.





















We took a day trip to Vista Lake, this time with the boat. Vista is a beautiful lake, and the portage from Horseshoe is not bad, but the landings suck. They are rocky and slippery and getting in and out of the boat is not so pleasant. We overshot the southwest campsite and headed to the southern-most one, which is a very nice site with incredible views. We had a snack-like lunch at the site, then moved onto the other site on the southern part of Vista Lake. This site leaves a lot to be desired and has a very steep landing. After looking around, climbing around and seeing the rusty artifacts, we headed back to camp. Amber earned her second bribe, a chess, checkers and backgammon camping game. Amber and I played in the tent for awhile, even making up some games. We had spaghetti with meat sauce for dinner, then I decided to take the boat out fishing. I spent about half an hour paddling around before I got my first bite, a ~12" walleye. I'm not much of a fisher, but I've taken a little interest for the first time this year. The one fish was enough to satisfy my fishing desire, but now I wish I would have tried for some more. It was my first fish caught from a canoe. Hopefully, I'll have many more. We skipped the fire, and we were all in bed by 9 or 9:30. We traveled about 4.5 miles on Tuesday.

   Wednesday, we were all up early and on the water by 6 am to look for some critters. Amber has been desperate to see a moose, but unfortunately, we never got to see one. However, we did get a treat to see a family of beavers. We went to the SE campsite, back down to the Vista portage and back to We paddled to the northwest arm of Horseshoe and took the portage to Allen sans  the boat. There's a rocky shallow section near the portage in which we got stuck, so be careful if your heading that way. We saw plenty of paint on one of the rocks, so we were not the first to hit it. Amber enjoyed playing on the rocks on the Allen side of the portage, and we took a bunch of pictures. We also followed a loon around Horseshoe Lake on the way back to camp. Dinner was garlic parmesan bannock with parkay squeeze butter. Amber went to the tent to play around 7 and amazingly crashed for the night. That almost never happens at home. I built a fire while Lorraine cleaned up camp, then we listened to the weather forecast on the radio. The forecast was not promising for Thursday afternoon nor all day Friday, when we planned to leave, so we floated the idea of leaving early if we had a window. We decided to wait and see. I watched the fire until about 10 pm before putting it out and heading to bed not knowing if we would be leaving in the morning.camp. Once again, Amber had two packs of oatmeal, and Lorraine and I had hash browns and Spam. Amber and I dipped a line from shore, but it was not a good spot for fishing as the water is only a couple feet deep there. The morning was terribly overcast despite a forecast suggesting some sun, but we finally got treated to a few hours of sun in the afternoon. It was enough to charge some batteries for the phone, which I use for GPS, and the camera and to dry our clothes, much of which was wet due to the weather and muddy portages. The forecast was for more rain, so we decided to move the tent in preparation. We ate taco meat, beans and tortillas for lunch. Amber had ackaged buttery noodles (Knorr brand, which is similar to the Lipton ones). We paddled to the northwest arm of Horseshoe and took the portage to Allen sans  the boat. There's a rocky shallow section near the portage in which we got stuck, so be careful if your heading that way. We saw plenty of paint on one of the rocks, so we were not the first to hit it. Amber enjoyed playing on the rocks on the Allen side of the portage, and we took a bunch of pictures. We also followed a loon around Horseshoe Lake on the way back to camp. Dinner was garlic parmesan bannock with parkay squeeze butter. Amber went to the tent to play around 7 and amazingly crashed for the night. That almost never happens at home. I built a fire
while Lorraine cleaned up camp, then we listened to the weather forecast on the radio. The forecast was not promising for Thursday afternoon nor all day Friday, when we planned to leave, so we floated the idea of leaving early if we had a window. We decided to wait and see. I watched the fire until about 10 pm before putting it out and heading to bed not knowing if we would be leaving in the morning. We traveled about seven miles on Wednesday.  

Thursday morning I got up around 8 am, hours after Lorraine as usual. The forecast was for rain most of Thursday and Friday with chances of thunderstorms, so we decided to pack up and leave early. We were packed and on the water just after 10 am. We arrived back at the outfitter shortly after 1 pm after a slight detour due to an overshot of Rockwood by paddling around (instead of between) the islands on Poplar. We showered, chatted with Mike and Lynn, bought some souvenirs and headed out around 3 pm. We stopped at Tettegouche to pick up a patch for me and a small memento for Amber, then we ate dinner at Betty's Pies. While waiting for dinner, I saw that the detailed forecast specific for the area in which we camped was much better than the general forecast we heard on the radio. Although it was a little disappointing to leave early, I think we made the right decision based on the information we had at the time. We decided to head home instead of possibly getting a hotel and doing some sightseeing as we had contemplated. We made it home around 1am.

Overall, I think we had a really successful first BWCA trip, and there's not too much I would change. Our food barrel was pretty heavy, so I might want to lighten the load a little by leaving out some heavy items. We didn't portage very far, but if we plan to go any farther, I think an ultralight kevlar canoe is in order. If I'm not a more experienced fisherman by the next trip, I will be tempted to leave the fishing gear at home, although it wasn't a great burden to carry it. We just didn't spend enough time fishing to justify it. Now, I look forward to planning the next adventure to new waters.

Here are some additional pictures of our trip: