And...we STILL haven't updated the website

OK, this is becoming rather broken-record-ish and probably getting annoying for those of you interested in hearing about the trip. We expected to put an update online by Christmas and, obviously, it didn't happen. But the build-up to the holidays is always a bit crazy and unfortunately the website updates suffered as a result.

BUT...

I'm pleased to announce that I've finished the first draft of the entire trip report (all 30+ pages of it). I'll be editing it in the next few days and you will see updates to the website very soon. And for those of you drooling over a detailed story of the journey, I promise you will not be disappointed. So please, check back soon!

'Gaah! Why haven't you updated the website?'

A valid question, no doubt. I know that some of you keep checking back to find out more about our trip, and, frankly, you're getting weary of the fact that nothing is ever updated on the site or our blog.

Well, yes. Poo on us for having not posted so much as a single lousy picture! "Busy" is a crappy excuse, but that's just how our fall has been.

But the update is coming soon. I'm finally going through the trip diary now and composing an expansive and windy narrative all about our adventure. Reviewing each day, it's quite amazing how much happened. I won't fall into the trap of giving myself a deadline - too many of those to deal with at work all of the time - but I will tell you that the Greatly Anticipated Trip Report should be up and live on GunflintToElyCanoe.com sometime in the next couple of weeks - absolutely before Christmas. (I'd love to devote 100 percent of my time to it now, actually, but gosh darn it, I gots to earn a livin' too and that kind of gets in the way of website hobbies.)

Seriously - thanks for your patience. The full trip report is coming soon...

P.S.: Trip report teaser - which you might have gathered from reading the last post about a guy with the gun in his truck - Gunflint to Ely Canoe did not end how, or where, we expected. Stay tuned!

We survived

Eight days.
Rain.
About 8,300 rods* of hiking and hauling gear.
Rain.
More rock scrapes on the canoe than we'd care to admit.
Rain.
Too many dam beaver dams.
Rain.
The stink of mouldering socks and hiking boots.
Rain.
A few precious moments of blue skies, sun, and Boundary Waters beauty.
Thunder, lighting, and rain.
Hitching a ride from a guy who had a gun in the front seat of his pickup.
And rain.

[*Because 1 rod equals 16 feet, we portaged - and hiked back to the start and hauled more gear and the canoe across on a second round - more than 25 miles. No kidding. Small wonder my ankle feels like it's been trampled by a moose.]

We made it. We're home. You heard it here first.

And we have stories to tell. Check GunflintToEly.com for updates. We'll be posting the story of our adventure, day by day, in the coming weeks.

As always, we will keep you abrest of our updates via the blog. Stay tuned!

Packing up and heading out

After more than 100 days of anticipation, it's expedition time!

I'd planned to update the blog more frequently this week, but as usual life got in the way. Run errands and go shopping, clean house, go back to the store because I didn't get enough stove fuel the first time, pay bills, get haircut, and pack in fits and starts throughout the week. A week of vacation is better than a long weekend, but it's harder to prepare for it. You have to make the house - and the pet fish and parakeets - ready for you to not be around for seven or eight days. Complications inevitably ensue, but that's par for the course.

We finished packing yesterday. Or mostly finished. What baffles me is that we've been packing, in one form or another, since Sunday. To make matters worse, Jenni's had the obligatory pre-vacation hell week at work, where everything's needed to be done now and the inbox fills twice as fast as she can empty it. But we finally hit it hard last night and now are, more or less, packed. Our tent, sleeping bags, equipment, clothes, sleeping mats, and food are all sheathed in garbage bags - keeps stuff dry, dontcha know - and stuffed into three Duluth Packs.

No packing could be complete without the inevitable argument or two, and Jenni's incredulous expression: "You're taking what?" Yes, I'm bringing a weather radio; it might be nice to know if there's a severe thunderstorm bearing down on us. Yes, I'm lugging along my big tripod, because it's essential to getting good photos. No, you won't have to carry either. Stop worrying.

Jenni rolled her eyes at both: "So unnecessary." Yeah - in her world.

This will probably get me into a lot of trouble in years to come, but the wife is not always right. There, I said it. Ninety-nine percent of the time? Absolutely, without a doubt. But I reserve that other 1 percent for situations just like this.

Besides, how would we get a picture of ourselves, together, on our anniversary, without the tripod?

Exactly. I'm glad you understand.

I posted in the BWCA.com Trip-Planning Forum a couple of days ago to see if the regulars there had any advice for the trip. Sounds like we're in for a beautiful journey from what they've said. We were cautioned about the Frost River - not to be attempted at low water levels. (The question du jour is, everbody now, "How low are they?") And if attempted, it will take all day. Start early.

That was our plan. Good to know we're on the same wavelength as the veterans.

Forum member highplainsdrifter also gave us some good advice regarding campsites and portages. Notably:

The little string of lakes south of Little Sag are pretty (but time consuming with portages). For heaven's sake, don't screw up on the portage out of Panhandle into Pan. We did and others have, too. The real portage trail is not in the cove where the drainage is. Look to the right and you will see a well-maintained trail.

He is referring to this. You can read all about that little misadventure here; scroll down to "Part 14 of 16":

We eventually noticed a clearing to our right, and looked at it dumbfounded.
Nate: "What the hell is that?"
Joe: "Uhh, that looks like a portage trail."
Matt: "What the hell is it doing over there?"

Note to self: Remember to look to the right of the cove. Thanks, highplainsdrifter!

Also, great news: Earlier this week, the Forest Service lifted the fire ban on the blowdown zone! So we'll be able to enjoy a campfire every day, and cook our hot dogs on Banadad Lake tomorrow night.

So, that's it. Jenni will be home soon with the canoe. Tomorrow we're off to Grand Marais for a stop at the USFS ranger station to pick up our permits and be re-educated by the proper BWCA camping techniques video. Then it's off to the Trail Center for hamburgers, and finally, to the waters of Poplar Lake, where the journey begins...

Down to the final week

Can't believe we have just four days to go! The summer has really gone fast.

Jenni and I decided we had to do something fun and adventurous for the holiday weekend. Might as well work in one more chance to get our paddling arms in shape, I surmised, so I planned our excursion...a half-day kayaking on the St. Croix River upstream from Stillwater. We paddled along heavily wooded banks, tree-topped cliffs, and ducked behind islands to avoid the powerboat traffic. Several miles upriver, we landed at a beach for lunch in the shadow of this:

The Soo Line High Bridge is a fantastic but little-known landmark. It's a 100-year old railroad bridge that spans the entire St. Croix River Valley in five graceful arches. Towering 184 feet above the water and spanning nearly 2,700 feet, it's every bit as big as it looks, and it still carries train traffic. Stand underneath, look up, and you get dizzy.

The bridge has obviously been a popular spot for a while because, etched into the cliff below the bridge, we saw that Jack, Jean, and Florence had been here in 1931.


After lunch, we headed back downstream to the public access - into a headwind, of course. But all in all, it was an awesome day on the river.

After we got home, we started packing. First, we set up our tent. It's a Kelty tent, a wedding gift from Jenni's parents.

And it has Storm Trooper-ish vestibules to keep our shoes and gear dry! (That's Lily, the doggie we are fostering, coming toward me.)

I've never had a tent with vestibules, so I can't wait to try it out.

Then we tested our stoves, and started dragging camping gear out of the closets and garage.

We were in better shape Sunday. After Jenni finished fine-tuning our menu, we went grocery shopping. Then we pulled our food out of its packaging and double-bagged it in plastic bags, for maximum spillage protection and minimum weight and bulkiness.

I discovered that being the menu-coordinator's helper in the kitchen meant sampling leftover snacks. M&M's, peanuts, chocolate-covered raisins. Sign me up for that job again!

Last night, Jenni combined our respective first aid kits into one super first-aid kit and folded and bagged our maps. The living room is awash in gear and Duluth packs. Now, we only have to tie up a few loose ends, pack our clothes, and fill the Duluth packs.

I just checked the Canoe Country forecast and the 10-day outlook says we can look forward to a mix of sun and rain, with highs in the 50s and 60s and lows in the 40s and even the 30s! Good early fall weather.

Look for more updates later this week.

Allure of the ancients at Fishdance Lake

Wednesday night, Jenni and I finally had a chance to sit down and pore over our BWCA maps. We developed a rough plan to break it down, day by day:

Day 1, Saturday: Put in at Poplar Lake, portage into the BWCA, camp at Banadad Lake
Day 2, Sunday: Banadad to Frost Lake, via Long Island Lake
Day 3, Monday: The Frost River; camp at Mora Lake or, preferably, Little Saganaga Lake
Day 4, Tuesday: Little Saganaga to the Kawishiwi River, camp along the Kawishiwi or on Alice Lake
Day 5, Wednesday: Alice to Lake Insula (a shorter, easier day)
Day 6, Thursday: Lake Insula to the popular Number Lakes; we'll likely camp somewhere in Lake Two or Lake Three
Day 7, Friday: Number Lakes to the North Kawishiwi River; camp at the last site on the edge of the Boundary Waters where the North Kawishiwi becomes Farm Lake
Day 8, Saturday: Farm Lake to Bear Island Lake and the finish of the trip

That final day is going to be a whopper. We have no portages - theoretically, anyway - but have to cross the "large and windswept" expanse of White Iron Lake and paddle up the Bear Island River. In total, we'll cover a good 15 miles - or more.

With the building excitement for the trip - just a week away now - I've been doing bits of spare-moment research. Wednesday evening I looked up a few of the lakes and rivers in various Boundary Waters guide books on the shelf at Barnes & Noble. Jenni and I know the Frost River route is going to be challenging, particularly if the water is low. It has frequent portages, some of them rough, and, from what I've read, a good number of beaver dams to negotiate. It's going to be a long, hard day...the kind that, according to one book, is capable of putting friendly canoe-mates temporarily at odds by the end of the day.

Well, nothing like a good test of the ol' marriage. Monday, the Frost River day, will be our first anniversary.

Another note: While looking up some information about forest fires, I learned that we'll be passing through part of the area burned by the Ham Lake Fire last year. That 75,000-acre blaze sent a finger of flame surging south of the Gunflint Trail, right across Rush Lake, one of the first few lakes we'll paddle. We'll also paddle through the locales of two 2006 fires: The Famine Lake Fire burned the forest around the eastern end of Long Island Lake, and the Cavity Lake Fire blackened Little Saganaga Lake's northern shore.

Most exciting has been a discovery I made earlier this week looking up Boundary Waters historic sites online. The Boundary Waters is home to the location of a number of pictograph sites (one of the finest examples is at Hegman Lake). These reddish rock paintings of animals, canoes, manitous, and maymayguayshi (man-like figures) were made by Native Americans. Most are estimated to be between 400 and 1,000 years old.

A couple of months ago, Jenni and I were visiting my grandfather, Otto Christensen, an avid outdoorsman who has taken many trips to the Boundary Waters. He asked if we were going to be see any pictograph sites on our voyage. "No," I replied, "unfortunately our route won't take us near any of them." Rotters, too, because coming upon this ancient art in the wilderness would be awesome.

How wrong I was! As it turns out, one well-known pictograph site is on a rock face rising from the waters of Fishdance Lake...just a short detour off our Kawishiwi River route near Alice Lake (I've added the location of Fishdance Lake to our map).

Just the name "Fishdance Lake" conjures up images of ancient spirits and total wildness. This is a place with history. And it's calling my name.

Contradiction: mosquitoes and a fire ban

Up in the North Country, certain things go hand-in-hand: A moose and a pond. Tamaracks and a bog. Blueberry bushes and a rocky outcrop. A bear and a dumpster. A portage and a steep hill - or waist-deep muck hole. One isn't quite complete without the other.

Two Boundary Waters regulars I never expected to see paired together, however, just hooked up last week: a bumper crop of mosquitoes, and a U.S. Forest Service-issued campfire ban.

Mosquitoes, of course, inhabit the wet-and-swampy places, which the BWCA and surrounding region have in abundance. Too bad the desert southwest isn't in the market for ponds, bogs, and swamps, or we could all retire millionaires.

The North Country - from the farthest reaches of the tundra all the way down to our beloved Boundary Waters - has a reputation for hella fierce bugs come summer. Mosquitoes are a given, but the BWCA also breeds noseeums, black flies, and my favorite, the horse fly. The horse fly is probably the most bad-ass of the bunch. Wikipedia explains why:

The bite from a larger specimen is extremely painful, especially considering the light, agile, and airborne nature of the fly. Unlike insects which surreptitiously puncture the skin with needle-like organs, horse flies have mandibles like tiny serrated scimitars, which they use to rip and/or slice flesh apart. This causes the blood to seep out as the horsefly licks it up. They may even carve a chunk completely out of the victim, to be digested at leisure.

It's every bid as horrid as it sounds. I've watched a horse fly land on me and literally rip a chunk of flesh right out of my skin.

None of the pestilence of these bloodsucking and flesh-eating insects are spared on the unwitting canoeist. (Once you've been out in canoe country in June, it's easier to understand why the voyageurs wore long-sleeved shirts and pants on even the hottest summer days. Or they probably did. At least that's what paintings portray.)

(Aside: I recently learned that black flies, apparently, are largely responsible for pollinating blueberry plants. No black flies means no blueberries. So the next time one takes a bite out of your arm and you ask yourself, "Why on earth did God create the black fly?" you'll know the answer: To pollinate blueberry bushes.)

Fortunately, the bug season is as transient as it is fierce. June is merciless, but the flies and mosquitoes dwindle by mid-July. Come the typical mid-August, the BWCA is practically bug-free.

But it's been a wet year. The Gunflint Trail received something like 20 inches of rain in two months last fall. Snowfall was back to normal levels - that's a good 100 inches - this winter. And the spring and early summer brought deluge after deluge. One particularly potent set of storms earlier this summer washed out parts of the Gunflint Trail and flooded downtown Grand Marais (the link is to photos, including a couple taken by my cousin, Kate Watson). Lake levels are 3+ feet higher than a year ago, and the USFS Smokey Bear fire danger signs in the Superior National Forest read "LOW" for the first time in many summers.

All of this moisture has had consequences. The mosquitoes have stayed long past their time. During a normal mid-August cabin trip, we might notice the occasional dim-witted, slow-flying mosquito during the day - easily snuffed in a slap of the hands - and a few more at dusk.

Just a week ago, however, mosquitoes were a nearly constant presence in the woods. Loose the breeze, and they were on you like sharks on a blood trail, whining in your ear and biting your neck. At sunset, clouds of them ascended from the woods. Even biting flies made late-season cameos over the weekend.

Well, fine. If a few more bugs mean the Canoe Country is safe from forest fires this year, that's a small price to pay.

Au contraire: On Wednesday this week, the Forest Service announced a ban on all campfires in the blowdown area of the Boundary Waters. This is not an unusual action: The USFS has been cautious about the risk of forest fires in blowdown area since 1999, and especially after 2006's Cavity Lake Fire and the devastating Ham Lake Fire of 2007 (click the link for photos; click here for even more). The Forest Service will enact fire bans whenever the weather turns dry. And while fall, winter, and spring were wet, much of Canoe Country hasn't seen more than the occasional rain shower or downpour since early July.

The ban took effect Thursday last week, until further notice. While it does not include propane stoves - like those Jenni and I will use to cook on the canoe trip - it does mean that we may lose the romance of a cheery nightly campfire. Nearly half our trip falls within the blowdown fire restriction zone as defined by the Forest Service.

Clouds of mosquitoes in the midst of a fire ban? That's a first.

A couple of weeks ago on the blog, I joked about snow in September. Now, consider the benefits: lower fire danger and no more mosquitoes.

Snow in September nearly sounds welcome!

Finallly, canoe paddles in the water

So, last week I was feeling a bit introspective. This week, I'm going to skip the self-reflection blah blah and cut straight to the trip report.

It's a rare weekend at the cabin that doesn't live up to expectations, but this past weekend went beyond: It was perfect in almost every way. Bright sun, blue sky, ripe berries, warm days, and a lake that was begging for play.

We challenged ourselves - but not too much - with a couple of afternoon mountain biking expeditions. We cruised Clearwater's shore at dusk, our kayaks cutting neat Vs through the glassy water. We watched the full moon rise from behind the wooded ridge south of the lake.

And finally, we managed to get ourselves out of bed in time for the sunrise and the ethereal mist that envelops the water on chill mornings. We slipped our kayaks into the water as the fog began to fade. Yet across the lake, it was still thick...so heavy in some places that it muted the sun to a pale orb.

We lazily chased the fog down the lake, paddling into heavy mist, only to watch the trees on shore gain definition and color as the sun began to burn through. By 7:30, the fog was lifting along the whole shore in ragged clouds, as though the sun had finally pulled back the curtains on the new day. We headed back to the dock refreshed - and hungry. (For a photo gallery, click here.)

Like I said...perfect.

And certainly enjoyable. But for the highlight of the trip, you only need read the title of this post: We canoed! At long last, our location, plans, and the weather aligned perfectly for a canoe day-trip. Friends of ours - two couples - joined us for the weekend. Saturday we set out to give them a taste of our rugged eastern corner of the Boundary Waters.

We packed a picnic lunch, then split ourselves by gender (that's usually how it works, isn't it?), three to a canoe, and set off down the lake. With a mile behind us, we landed at a crude trail head and made the sweaty 15-minute hike to the top of one of the Clearwater Lake palisades. Here, atop a windy cliff 400 feet above the water, we had a commanding view of the forested hills surrounding Clearwater Lake.

We quenched our thirst, munched on a few wild blueberries, and gazed at an eagle soaring on the wind currents above. Then it was back down the trail, through the hot woods with the annoying whine of mosquitoes, until we felt the breeze off the lake.

Back on the water, I took a turn in the stern of our "guys" canoe. My J-stroke was rusty, my experience with canoe steerage limited. (I much prefer to sit in front and motor along, enjoying the scenery without having to think about where we're going, or our angle relative to the wind). To my surprise, the nuances of keeping us straight ahead quickly came back. A bit of J-stroke here, a draw stroke there, and the periodic use of my paddle as a rudder kept us on course. Riding the wind, it was not long before the Mountain Lake portage came into view.

Ninety rods later, we were standing on the rocky shore of a quiet bay, exchanging pleasantries with a group just taking out of the lake for the portage to Clearwater. Tree-topped ridges with protruding cliffs towered above. As we paddled from behind the protection of a peninsula, we felt the stiff northwest wind sweeping down Mountain Lake. But our destination was in sight: an island that "may or may not have been in Canada" where we'd lunch. Lunch tastes so much better when you've been working hard in the outdoors.

By mid-afternoon, we were on our way back. Ever thinking ahead, Jenni suggested I shoulder one of the canoes across the portage. Sure, I thought, no problem.

It was easy all the way uphill. Halfway through the portage, the aluminum canoe's weight seemed to double (and it was the lighter of the two, I'll admit). It crushed more on my shoulders with every step downhill. It was never unmanageable, but by the time Clearwater came into view I was looking forward to getting out from under it. That was 90 rods...longer than many of our Gunflint to Ely Canoe portages, but far shorter than the 300-rod beast that would start the trip.

Jenni is planning to borrow a canoe for us through Wilderness Inquiry; I'm crossing my fingers that it will be Kevlar.

Back on Clearwater, I was again in the stern. This time we had the unforgiving wind in our face and whitecaps breaking against our bow. This time, there was no opportunity for me to question my lack of experience or doubt my abilities to get us safely through the waves - it simply had to be done.

We headed for the protection along the northern shore. Our whitecaps did not last long. An hour and a few miles later, we were tying up at the dock and ready for a well-deserved swim. Nearly every one of my muscles was tender the next day, but by our estimate we covered 12 miles - not much less than we planned to do per day on our trip. And it wasn't that bad!

Finally, Jenni and I can notch our first canoe adventure of the year on our belts. But it's probably going to be the only one until we launch for Ely, which is coming up in just two weeks!

We've still lots to do: meal-planning, shopping, packing. And Jenni promises crunch-time physical conditioning in the form of running and push-ups.

So, lots to look forward to in the coming weeks.

Reality kicks anticipation in the butt

I'm in an anticipatory mood this week. Anticipation, it is said, is half the fun of going anywhere, so I'll take my half now, thank you.

First, it's the cabin, coming up later this week. And it feels like the real deal this time: Jenni will be in tow; I'm not in the midst of a hectic month of work delayed until the last minute and then piled on in indiscriminate, unforgiving heaps; and we just might paddle a canoe. (I'm obligated to mention here that we have wonderful neighbors - with a large, intimidating dog - who keep a close eye on the place while we are gone.)

Then, it's Labor Day weekend. I'm not planning on going anywhere or doing anything...except, perhaps, for a kayaking adventure somewhere about town, and packing for the trip. Really, who cares if anything happens? It's a three day weekend, and that in and of itself is reason enough to await it with vigor.

It goes without saying that there is plenty of looking forwardness - on the part of both Jenni and I - for the G-to-E canoe expedition. After all, that's "half" the reason for this blog and associated web gadgetry...it's an excuse to let the excitement build 'til it overflows onto the digital page to be shared with you.

Anticipation is often misleading, but innocently so, because it always means well. Before I left for the cabin last month, I was salivating at the prospect that I'd soon escape to the shore of a Boundary Waters lake. I'd arrive ready to soak up the relaxing-and-refreshing cabin experience, take the mountain bike for a spin, fish, and photograph beautiful sunsets. Reality was somewhat different: I didn't get much sleep the night before the 300-mile drive, so I arrived tired and zombied through the first day. The wind never let up, so fishing was lousy. (The best part, if this says anything, was when I laid on the seat of our fishing boat and fell asleep staring up at the wind-whipped clouds.) I did kayak, but mostly I sat on my butt, read magazines, and chowed junk food while ruminating on the cloudy prospects on a long-term career in media.

This was not the idolized - nor typical, I might add - weekend at the cabin. The right ingredients were there, but they never quite came together in the usual life-is-bliss-as-long-as-I'm-here fashion. Don't confuse that for complaining...it's just squaring reality with expectations.

A similar destiny awaits in September. I have a golden image of our trek across the boundary country. I see the mist burning off the lake at sunrise while the yodel of a loon echoes off the shore. I hear the gurgle of water around our paddles, and the rush of rapids along the Frost and Kawishiwi Rivers as we portage. I feel the chill of the evening air on my back and the warmth of a campfire on my face. And I'm anticipating scattered pockets of fall color bursting out among the green-and-blue landscape. Of course, the trail will get us acquainted with the realities of the journey: blistered hands, sore shoulders, rock-and-root-stubbed toes, stream-clogging beaver dams, muddy portages that seem to never end, headwinds, waves, and - of course - rain. Heck, in September it could even snow.

But out of such a character-building litany are bound to come a few stories. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to having a few tales to spin - and stretch - upon our return.

Hey, maybe we'll have a run-in with a bear!

That's anticipation at its best.

On the hunt for Fisher Map F-3

Seems like it's been a long time since our last update! I guess it has been. We've been alternating between busy times at work, and trying our hardest to kick back and relax on the weekends.

We did do a bit of paddling last weekend, again in the kayaks...on Fish Lake and Rice Lake in Maple Grove. Fish Lake was another end-of-the-day paddle, where I discovered that it's not the most intelligent idea to attempt to navigate through weed beds. Now that we're well into summer, aquatic plant life in the lakes around the Twin Cities is going gangbusters. My kayak floated over the "weeds" with ease, but the rudder got a bit hung up and, worse, the plants seemed to be grabbing at my paddles. It was like venturing into the tentacles of a submerged creature that was hungry.

Jenni, smartly, stayed out in open water.

That was Saturday. Sunday we went for a short afternoon paddle on Rice Lake - the same waters where we first launched the kayaks. The water was of questionable quality even in June, but a month and a half later it was even more cloudy, smelly, and in some places nearly fluorescent green with thick algae at the surface. As we paddled past homes along the lake, the cause of this eutrophication was obvious: lush green lawns mowed right to the water's edge. Dipping our paddles in such muck was reinforcement that "buffer zones" of natural vegetation along lakes, rivers, and creeks are a must to preserve water quality.

Our launch countdown clock on the page caught my attention today. Only 28 days to go. We've been talking about the big canoe trip for so long that it still seems a somewhat distant and vague notion in my mind. But a month from today - September 9 - we will be three days into the wilderness! We still have a lot of preparation ahead...packing lists, menu planning, and detailing our day-to-day campsite goals along the route.

Until recently, we were also missing a map. We purchased wonderful McKenzie Maps of the Boundary Waters at REI in March. These maps are fantastic: they show a detailed overview of lakes, portages, campsites, and shaded topography of the land. Unfortunately, McKenzie's coverage doesn't extend much beyond the beautiful BWCA and Quetico. As far as our route was concerned, we would paddle off the edge of the world right halfway across White Iron Lake southeast of Ely.

We know there's not a giant waterfall into the infinite abyss here because we continued tracing our route in the Minnesota Atlas & Gazetteer (and we confirmed it thanks to Google Maps' satellite photos). But we can't truck a computer along in the canoe, and pulling out the newspaper-dimensioned map atlas with lakes the size of a thumbnail isn't practical.

The other (and perhaps foremost) authority on BWCA maps is W.A. Fisher Co. Fisher has been publishing maps of the U.S.-Canada boundary lakes region for a good 75 years. Fisher Maps are of a bit larger scale than McKenzie...and Fisher boasts a larger coverage area (the BWCA, Ely, Lake Vermilion, Quetico, and other lakes in Canada). Of course Fisher had a map that covered the remainder of our route. It would have been easy to order it online, but I didn't want to pay tax and shipping. So I searched for it in stores. The Bloomington REI had some Fisher maps, but not F-3. I tried Gander Mountain in Maple Grove: nada.

Frustrated nearly to the point of forking over shipping and handling, I was headed up to the cabin a couple of weeks ago when the ol' idea light bulb clicked on: I bet I could find said map Up North!

Few cabin trips are complete without a stroll down to the road to Clearwater Outfitters and Lodge, usually to buy a candy bar. (And the candy is even more satisfying when the trip to the lodge is via kayak.) This time, I went sniffing around the tall map shelf that sits along a log wall beneath a stuffed moose head. Alas, I was skunked again - while the lodge had a great selection of Fisher maps, especially for the eastern Boundary Waters, F-3 remained elusive. I asked the lodge owner about ordering a map, but she said she wasn't able to order single maps (and, admittedly, it wouldn't make a lot of sense for Clearwater Lodge to stock up on maps of the Ely area). She suggested a couple of websites - whoops, more S&H plus no instant gratification of a map-in-hand - or the Lake Superior Trading Post in Grand Marais.

Ah, yes - the Lake Superior Trading Post. A visit to Grand Marais isn't complete without stopping here. It's a fairly typical Up North Shop for Tourists, but bigger and better, and a literal stone's throw from the Grand Marais harbor. The usual suspects are in stock, from gifts to pricey outdoor wear to stuffed animals and books. (I admit I've bought many a regionally themed book here and enjoyed them all.) But LSTP also has practical camping equipment, knives and fishing lures, a great selection of hats, and yes, maps.

And not just your typical ratty, disorganized, forgotten shelf tucked in a corner. This was a whole section, with a complete catalog of McKenzie and Fisher maps, maps of the Superior Hiking Trail, detailed overviews of Isle Royale and some of the larger inland lakes, and Lake Superior navigation charts (not the laminated place-mat crap stamped "NOT FOR NAVIGATION" - these were the real deal).

There, tucked neatly on the shelf with the "F-3" label, was my map. White Iron Lake, in its massive windswept entirety. One Pine Lake. The northeast finger of Bear Island Lake. And the Bear Island River connecting them all.

When I brought the map to the checkout counter, I remarked that I'd been looking all over for it, including in the Twin Cities, and LSTP was the first place to have it.

"We have the most complete selection of Boundary Waters maps of anyone," the guy behind the counter replied. "Even anyone in the Twin Cities."

No kidding. If I need maps in the future, I know where to go.

Incidentally, while the time at the cabin was enjoyable, the weather was generally windy - gusty during the day, breezy all night, every day I was there. It made fishing difficult and canoeing unappealing. Plus, my canoe partner was back in the hot-and-humid Twin Cities, as her work schedule hadn't allowed for the time off.

Pathetically enough, we still have yet to set foot in a canoe this year. But we're feeling the countdown now, and we're headed Up North again next week. I'm sure the canoe will hit the water this time - wind and weather be damned!

The Blood Cave, or "Holy crap, this thing is HUGE!"

If you haven't yet read part one of this story, please scroll down to the next post first.

I'd hardly call my interest in finding and exploring mostly forgotten-about places an "abandoned railroad fetish." It just so happens that old railroad grades are usually easy to mountain bike, and there's often interesting sights along them.

Now I'd found one and had to ride it this summer. I couldn't wait another year to see the now-confirmed tunnel and trestle. Some Googling revealed that the railroad grade had once been the main line into Duluth for the Duluth, Winnipeg, and Pacific Railway. The tunnel was blasted under Ely's Peak in 1912. The last train ran here in 1984, when the rails were rerouted to accommodate the construction of I-35. But the tunnel was still open (a friend who grew up in Duluth told me, "That's where all the stoner kids hang out").

Jenni and I went to her family's cabin the weekend of July 12-13. We'd planned on lots of canoeing but high winds, rain, and generally crapola weather kept us off the lake and cooped up in the cabin. By the time we were headed home on Sunday, we were itching to do something, anything. The sun popped out before we reached Duluth, and we had the bikes in the car.

It was time to launch an assault on the grade!

We parked at the end of the Munger Trail. Our plan was to do an out-and-back, out on the grade, back on the paved Munger Trail. We crossed Grand Avenue, passed the Lake Superior Zoo, and biked through a park. Up through the trees, the grade came into view in the form of an old concrete arch bridge crossing a gravel road.

We hiked the bikes up the slope and walked across that bridge, and an adjacent arch over a tumbling stream. The old ties were still in place on both bridges.

From there, it was smooth, easy riding. The grade was just wide enough for an ATV, and the surface was a mix of sand, gravel, and small rocks. Before long were were at Spirit Mountain. Here, part of the grade had been bulldozed. We followed some single-track through the woods. I had a spectacular head-over-handlebars wipe-out on a steep hill, but it was the sort of slow-motion affair that leaves one bruised, not bloodied.

Minutes later, we were out of the shade and crossing the sunny, grassy slope of Spirit Mountain's Four Pipe run. Ahead, just as I'd seen it in winter, the grade continued into the woods. We pressed on.

We passed a couple of near washouts, but generally the trail was easy, the climb gradual. "This is easy riding," I said to Jenni. Shouldn't have announced it: just up ahead was a long stretch of rocks...the kind you find spread along railroad tracks. I downshifted and picked my way through them. Nearly fell a couple of times, but made it to the end. Jenni was a ways back.

Now, I saw another bright sunny patch ahead. It seemed to have ties and railings...

The trestle!

Yes, this was it. I got off my bike, set it down, and assessed. The wood plank walkway along each side was in bad shape, cracked and rotted in places. The railing was up, but I wouldn't have trusted the weight of a fly to it. As for the bridge itself? Ties. There was no "deck" - just massive old ties with two-inch gaps of open space between. I muttered a volley of curses: I don't even like going up a flight of stairs with spaces between the steps.

I scrambled a few feet down the bank to get a better look at what we were about to cross. The bridge was a long longer from this perspective. And high - 50 or 60 feet above the rushing brook beneath it.

By now, Jenni had arrived. "Holy crap this thing is HUGE!" I exclaimed. Cue ominous movie soundtrack music.

She showed no fear and walked right onto it, stopping in the middle. She's brave, I thought. I picked up my bike and started stepped forward. The two-inch slices of foliage below quickly dropped away. I fought off the dizziness that inevitably accompanies high places.

But the gaps were too much. I had a death grip on my bike and my heart was pounding. The other side seemed no closer. The beam, I thought. The metal beam under the ties on each side of the bridge would give the illusion of something solid. I moved closer to the edge. This worked well...I caught a few glimpses of the drop beneath me, but mostly just saw the metal girder. Of course, now I was only a couple of feet from the rotting, busted walkway at the edge of the bridge, but whatever.

"Be careful, there's a couple of ties loose!" Jenni warned from up ahead. That's why she had stopped. Apparently, she told me later, I stepped right across the first one without realizing it. But the second one was very noticeable: it sank slightly and wobbled against the bolts holding it in place. I'm glad I'm over the beam, I thought, or I would wet my pants. But the highest part of the bridge was behind me now. Relax, I kept telling myself. Relax. And finally, I stepped onto blessedly solid ground.

Whew.

Not even a hundred yards later was another trestle, but this one was much smaller and over shallow ravine. After the bridge of towering terror that I'd just crossed, this was cake. From there, the grade opened up as it traversed the hillside. We had great views of St. Louis Bay and an eagle that soared above. We rode through several shadowy rock cuts, just wide enough to squeeze a train through. The shady basaltic narrows harbored refreshing cool air.

Suddenly, a mountain biker materialized in front of us. I'm not sure who was more surprised, but it was a pleasant discovery that we were not the only ones enjoying this hidden-but-scenic trail. We nodded hellos and as he disappeared behind us, I wondered if he would bike or walk across the high trestle.

Just about the time I was getting antsy for the tunnel the hill above us became markedly higher. Cliffs towered. And then, there it was...a gigantic black void in the cliff, like the gaping maw of a creature waiting to swallow us whole. There was no light at the other end.

I trotted up to the entrance for a photo op. I still couldn't see light, and I felt a breeze coming out of the tunnel mouth. On the boulders around my feet, someone had painted "BLOOD CAVE." "DANGER." "WARNING." Arrows pointing inside. How quaint.

It was damn dark in there, but before the entrance had receded from view we saw the glint of light off the rocks near the other end. Soon we were stepping back into the sunlight. "YOU MADE IT" the graffiti announced. So much for the Blood Cave. The potheads ought to go visit the Trestle of Death and see how they fare there.

On second thought, that's probably not a good idea.

After the tunnel, we had one more trestle to cross. This one was shorter, and perhaps 35 feet high, above an old gravel pit road. It also lacked the busted-but-oddly-reassuring railings, and in fact felt much more exposed that its predecessor. But of course I made it, well behind Jenni and my heart pounding like a timpani.

From there, it was literally all downhill. We got off the grade at the western terminus of Skyline Drive, crossed Midway Road, and a few minutes later were enjoying a fast seven-mile ride downhill back to Duluth and the parking lot.

Experience the Blood Cave and the Trestle of Death yourself: Gallery of photos here.

A trail, a trestle, a tunnel

OK, I confess. I'm a bit of an Internet geek. (That's probably no surprise to you, with the whole blog-and-website-about-the-canoe-trip thing.) But of all the goodies available on what my aunt refers to as the World Wide Waste-of-time, none captivates me like Google Maps. Interactive, zoomable maps with satellite photo overlays - sweet bliss.

See, I'm a bit of a map geek, too. I love poring over catrographs of, well, just about anything, and wondering what the landscape looks like right about there.

Google Maps were exciting enough, but Google had to go and up the ante with Google Earth. You're probably heard of it...it's a free downloadable program that shows you the Earth in three dimensions. Satellite photos, elevation data, "click this dot to see a photo of this place" - it's a wonder I ever get off the computer. (Jenni often drags me.)

One of my more pervasive habits is looking up places I know, and go to frequently, to see what might be worth exploring around them. A lake? A trail? A leftover relic of history?

That's exactly how I "discovered" Sportsman's Island.

But the island wasn't the only curiosity I've sought out. I've skied at Spirit Mountain in Duluth a few times. While carving up the slopes at the far end of the ski area, on more than one occasion I've noticed what appeared to be a flat, one-lane road cutting off from the slope and into the woods. Mountain biking on old logging railroad grades near the Gunflint Trail led me to suspect it might be a railroad grade. But cutting across a ski slope?

A few months ago, I pulled up Google Earth and zoomed into Spirit Mountain to see what I could find. The grade was easy to pick out. In the summertime image, it was a line of gravel transversing the mountain. As I zoomed out, I could see that it ran perpendicular to the slope of Duluth's big hill for several miles. North of Spirit Mountain, it soon entered an industrial area of the city - a telltale sign of a railroad grade.

On the other side of Spirit Mountain, the grade continued southwest, cutting along the hill about halfway up. It ran generally parallel to the Willard Munger State Trail, but seemed to promise better views. And it looked bike-friendly.

I traced all the way back to I-35. Nearby, it met up with active railroad tracks. A railroad grade indeed! But one thing was peculiar: about two-thirds of the way along the grade, it abruptly ended at a prominent rock outcrop, and continued again on the far side.

A tunnel? Could it possibly be a tunnel?

Looking for confirmation, I pulled up Microsoft Live Maps with its "Bird's eye" view. Not satellite photos, this is an actual mosaic of aerial photos from perspective angles. Coverage is spotty, but Duluth was one of the cities with these views. Spirit Mountain was an easy find, and I picked up the grade's dirt line and followed it southwest. Halfway to where I thought the tunnel should be, I shouted with surprise: Spanning a deep, narrow ravine was a large metal railroad trestle!

Tracing the grade further southwest, I saw now that it threaded several impressive rock cuts before, sure enough, ending at a rock wall with a dark opening. There it was, in all its glory: the tunnel.

A trestle and a tunnel! I thought these kinds of things only existed out west.

I had to see it. I had to mountain bike it. I showed my discovery to Jenni, who was thankfully interested in checking it out. (She accused me of having some kind of "abandoned railroad fetish," but whatever.)

The question was when?

As it would turn out, sooner than we thought.

In the interest of quasi-shorter blog posts, TO BE CONTINUED...

First Photo Gallery

You read about our July 4 Mississippi kayaking adventure...now see the photos! We have our first slide show photo gallery up and running at GunflintToElyCanoe.com. Check it out here, for more images of the river, the giant storm sewer outlet, and mysterious Sportsman's Island.

Next on the agenda: a trip to Bear Island Lake, our "finish line" in September, and a chance to do more canoeing.

Down the Mississippi to Sportsman's Island

The river has always been a backdrop.

As I kid, I spent many happy hours exploring the river bottoms and islands in the Mississippi River valley south of St. Cloud. During my teenage years, this environment taught me about nature, photography, and why it’s a bad idea to traipse through a patch of stinging nettles while wearing shorts. I attended high school in sight of the river and went to college along its oak-crowned banks. Through spring floods, summer dry spells, and winter’s ice, the Mississippi has always been there. And it always will be, part of the comfort of returning home when so much else in the world is ever changing.

So it seemed appropriate, even if not consciously so, that this should be the place of the first river kayak expedition with my wife. My parents had invited Jenni and me to their St. Cloud home for a Fourth of July barbecue, which sounded good, provided we could work in a real paddling adventure. So we hauled the kayaks along with us; my dad agreed to run us up to St. Cloud and drop us off along the river. We'd kayak several miles south and land at my parents' house in time for lunch.

The Fourth was as perfect a summer day as we can imagine here in Minnesota. Blue sky flecked with cottony puffs of cloud, 80 degrees, and a light breeze. I was doubly looking forward to the trip: It was the first real paddling expedition Jenni and I had embarked upon this year, and it was through a stretch of the river I knew well, yet had never navigated by water.

The drop-off point was Wilson Park - site of St. Cloud's annual Fourth of July fireworks display - where we put in at the Mississippi boat launch. After a thorough daubing of sunscreen, we paddled away from the dock and inlet and onto the river itself.

The athletic field of my high school passed on our right, but we hugged the high left bank. Kayaking is more interesting when you're closer to the shore. Downtown St. Cloud's three bridges came into view, bridges I know well but had never seen from this perspective. We passed several docks with moored pontoon boats along the shore - who knew there were docks here! - and then began our dizzying pass underneath the massive railroad bridge that connected the east St. Cloud with the rail yards on the west side of town. Veterans Bridge carrying St. Germain Street was next, with the rumble of unseen traffic above our heads.

Farther along, we paused to investigate the gaping maw of a storm sewer pipe along the shore. Chilly air poured out of blackness, and steam rose from the outlet. I couldn't help but wonder: How far back underground does the pipe go? Has anyone ever explored it? Would anyone dare?

As we passed downtown, DeSoto Bridge loomed ahead. This bridge, carrying State Highway 23 across the river, was the most major of the city's Mississippi road crossings, carrying 31,000 vehicles a day. Was is the key word. As we approached, the bridge was eerily quiet. It was closed by the state in March after bridge inspectors discovered some bending in its gusset plates. If you're a Minnesotan, you know the term "gusset plates" well: It was these metal plates, which bolt multiple girders together, that failed on the I-35W bridge in downtown Minneapolis nearly a year ago, causing its collapse. In the hyper-sensitive infrastructure environment that has followed, no bridge is above scrutiny. When inspectors found the bending gusset plate issue on the St. Cloud bridge - a fracture-critical bridge similar in design to the 35W bridge - they closed it, for good as it would turn out. It's scheduled to be replaced in 2009, with work starting just a couple of months from now.

So it was a little strange to be paddling underneath this black metal behemoth, knowing that I had walked and biked across it many times, but soon it would exist no more.

Jenni was getting impatient with my frequent stops for picture-taking, so I stowed the camera as the doomed DeSoto Bridge receded behind us. We made good time along the tall, wooded banks of the river. St. Cloud State University - our alma mater - slid by atop the far bank. By now, University Bridge was in sight as we could hear the distant rush of falling water...the St. Cloud Dam.

We pulled out of the river just upstream from the bridge. Eroded portage steps marked the landing at the edge of Munsinger Gardens. Anticipating turbulent waters ahead, I stowed my camera in the watertight forward hold of my kayak and we portaged around the dam.

Getting in was not as friendly as getting out. We had to carry the kayaks down a steep slope of rocky riprap to reach the river. Though very little water was going over most of the dam, the top gate had been lowered along the section closest to us, kicking up a narrow-but-fast current not far from shore. In contrast to the lake-like feel of the pool above the dam, here the water was fast moving and wavy.

We launched and were quickly carried downstream, past just-submerged rocks and through riffles. The most expedient route would have been to stick to the main channel, but we were in the mood to explore and headed to a side channel, one of many among the Beaver Islands. Zebulon Pike had explored these same channels 200 years earlier.

In some places, the water was only a few inches deep and our paddles scraped bottom...but the ride was fast. When I commented on the "rapids," Jenni corrected me: "These aren't rapids. Rapids have a drop." Oh...well, waves and rocks or whatever you want to call them were plenty exciting.

And then we ran aground. We were among the islands now, at the juncture of a couple of channels. Just that fast, the bottom came up to within a couple of inches of the surface, and with a gravelly crunch, we were stuck. We had to push off the bottom to get moving again, only to run aground a short distance later. We hopped out of the kayaks and walked down the channel for 50 yards, debating whether to continue or to try floating again. When another party of a canoe and two kayaks passed on the channel ahead, we opted to float.

The river was full of boulders here. The current picked up. Ahead, I could see a distinct line among the boulders of the river: a drop. Hello, rapids. It was just a few inches, thankfully, and with a little paddling, the kayaks slid right over it. Then another small drop, this time with waves beyond. By now, I'd recognized the "V" formed by fast current between rocks, so I aimed for it and sliced through the choppy water.

Wow. Crap that was exciting. This wasn't even Class I whitewater, and I was already sufficiently thrilled. I was also beginning to see that while our lovely long kayaks were great for tracking on a windy and wavy lake, they weren't adept at maneuvering around rocks in the swift, shallow currents of the Mississippi. Not at all like a canoe. This was confirmed a short time later when I took submerged rock head-on and felt it slide underneath me along the hull. Scraaape. Cringe.

We rejoined the main river and paddled across the channel, aiming upstream because of the current. It was a bizarre sensation, like going forward and backward at the same time. My stomach wrenched and I felt a wave of seasickness ripple through my body. Thankfully, it passed quickly.

Across the main channel, we turned into another shallow reach, this one a calm backwater, and paddled upstream. Foot-long carp darted away from the shadows of our boats as we passed. Around a bend, an extraordinary sight: the bridge to Sportsman's Island. This intriguing place had once been a park - my dad and his siblings had vague memories of going there as children in the late 1950s or early ’60s. Sometime later, perhaps the ’70s, the park was closed, abandoned for reasons unknown.

The rusting truss bridge connecting the island to the shore still stands, but its deck long ago fell apart and daylight shines through portions of the severely rusted girders. Jenni and I pulled up next to the bridge, carefully stepped around poison ivy, and climbed up the bank to the island.

There, we found the hulk of a decades-old car, grass growing through the engine compartment. Several rusting metal buildings stood watch over an open area. One, with old refrigerators and freezers and a few wide windows, we deduced to be a concessions building. Another was obviously a picnic shelter. A backstop rose out of waist-high grass, overlooking an empty field where a baseball diamond had been. There was even a rusty merry-go-round, still capable of spinning despite its disheveled condition.

Exploring these remains, I couldn't help but feel like we were seeing the leftovers of a bombed-out civilization. What happened to Sportsman's Island? As Jenni said, “This would be such a neat place for a park today.” Why wasn't this prime locale still open for recreation? What caused it to be abandoned so hastily?

We'll likely never know.

We tiptoed around the poison ivy and put the boats back in the water. More carp fled, leaving puffs of sediment beneath the surface. Soon we were back on the main river; a half hour later we were passing Putnam's Island, a place I'd explored on foot many of times. Around a bend, we cut into a shallow side channel, then turned upstream to land at the shore below my parents' home.

Every fireworks show has a grand finale. So did our Fourth of July adventure:
hauling two 17-foot, 63-pound kayaks up 70 feet of baking hot sand bank covered with prickly junipers. And that, not the paddling itself, is why I was sore for the rest of the weekend.

Look for a photo gallery of our little river ramble on GunflintToElyCanoe.com later this week.

The kayaks come home

OK, here we are back after a little hiatus with, finally, a kayak update. June 13 seems like ages ago. But that's the day we welcomed our gorgeous new kayaks home.

I took the day off of work to drive down to Winona, location of Current Designs' manufacturing facility. Jenni had to work, so my dad joined me. He has more expertise than I when it comes to lashing things to vehicles, and I though that knowledge might come in handy. The drive to Winona - down Highway 52, through Rochester, and then east on I-90 - was easy and we were at the Wenonah Canoe headquarters by 9 a.m.

There, we met Mike Cichanowski, owner and CEO of Wenonah Canoe and Current Designs. Mike's the guy who founded Wenonah 40 years ago! He was kind enough to arrange a factory tour for us, and personally showed us through the canoe manufacturing campus. For as well-known as the Wenonah brand is - at least here in Minnesota - I was surprised how compact the whole operation was. It's a cluster of nondescript-looking buildings tucked at the edge of an industrial park. But within, magic. As we walked through the factory, we saw the entire gestation of a canoe. I was particularly interested in how a Kevlar canoe was made. The Kevlar starts in rolls of cloth-like material, is cut and shaped in molds, fitted to a frame, and laminated with a gleaming layer of gel-coat. The pride Wenonah's craftsmen took in building these boats was obvious.

Next, we passed into a warehouse, with rows and rows of canoes lined into corrals along the wall. Mike explained that the majority of the boats were made-to-order, even custom built; everything we saw had been spoken for and was bound for the destination where its owners awaited. We learned that Wenonah ships a fair number of boats to Europe, especially Germany. How do they do it? By packing canoes and kayks into truck-sized metal containers and sending them across the pond on a container ship. Kind of cool that Wenonah canoes must sail the ocean to get to the lakes and rivers of Europe.

When our conversation touched the comparatively light weight of Kevlar canoes, Mike picked up a sleek honey-hued canoe, set it down on the wood-chipped floor, and invited us to give it a lift. Used to the 50-year-old aluminum canoes at our cabin, my dad and I bent down and prepared to heft each end. The canoe practically leapt into our hands! Mike said it was a scant 38 pounds. I'd never touched a Kevlar canoe before...but after that experience, I expect Jenni and I will get one someday. I want one. (And it made me seriously consider renting one for our big canoe trip in September.)

Next, it was off to the Current Designs factory building - a few minutes' drive away - where another team of skilled men and women were building kayaks. Here, two manufacturing lines were housed within one warehouse-sized building. On one side, fiberglass boats were being assembled. Molds adorned one wall, and across the floor, a number of boats were in various stages of construction. The top and bottom of the hull were molded separately using a vacuum-bag laminate process, then joined together at the seams, fitted with bulkheads, and finished with a silky smooth layer of gel-coat.

Passing through a door in the wall dividing the space, we found ourselves in the midst of the rotomolded polyethylene kayak line. At one corner of the space, a monster black oven, big enough to swallow a kayak, slowly rocked end to end. Complex-looking metal molds, recognizable by their rough kayak shape, sat on the cement nearby. This was where the boats were created: powered plastic was placed in the mold, which was put in the oven. As the powder began to melt, the rocking of the oven ensured it would flow evenly throughout the mold. Once this "baking" process is complete, the mold comes out and the new kayak is allowed to cool. As it cools, it shrinks by several inches, so the mold has to be engineered larger than the actual boat. How they figure out exactly what size to make the mold is beyond me, but they've obviously got it down. Once the boat has cooled, it's removed, any excess bits of plastic are trimmed off, and the kayak is finished with bulkheads, a seat, rudder, deck rigging, and so forth.

It's easier for Current Designs to design a new fiberglass kayak: its crew can create new molds themselves. Designing the complex metal molds for the plastic kayaks is a much more time and cost intensive process. But once the mold is ready, Current Designs can turn out a half-dozen or more plastic kayaks a day, compared to two or three fiberglass boats.

While my dad and I were in the midst of this fascinating tour, some of the awesome Current Designs folks grabbed the two kayaks that would be Jenni's and mine. By the time we got back to the car, the kayaks, wrapped for the journey in plastic and foam - were already loaded and secured strapped to the roof rack (see the photo above). They were solid as a rock - it makes sense that these guys knew how to lash kayaks to a car - and it was a good thing, because we endured a gusty drive home.

That evening, Jenni and I launched our Storm GTs on Rice Lake here in Maple Grove. We put in at a city park and pushed off into an evening of paddling bliss. We found our boats to be fast, stable, nimble on waves, and comfortable to sit in. All in all, paddling is a joy!

We've been out a few times since then on a couple of the lakes here in Maple Grove. Paddling across calm water at sunset is heaven, whether you're in the Boundary Waters or the Twin Cities suburbs. In our few evening jaunts, we've glided past flotillas of ducks and geese, watched a deer come to drink at the shore, spied on a snapping turtle that was as big as a dinner platter, and paid a visit to a pelican. We've followed canals from Rice Lake under Interstate 94 and into secluded wetlands hiding in the midst of suburbia, just out of sight of Maple Grove's busy thoroughfares.

I loved kayaking at my cabin, but now that I have a boat of my own, I can say with confidence that I'm an addict.

With the Fourth of July upon us, we're marking the holiday with our first mini-expedition. We are bound for St. Cloud, where the plan is to paddle from the city down the Mississippi River, through the wild Beaver Islands, to end at my folks' place just in time for lunch. If all goes well, we might have some pictures to post by the end of the weekend.

I'll close with a photo taken last Saturday, while I was spectating - from my kayak! - at the start of the City of Lakes Tri-Loppet race, which began on Lake Calhoun with a canoe/kayak race. What you can't see is the grin behind the camera.

A big, hearty thank you to Mike Cichanowski and all of the great people at Current Designs and Wenonah Canoe for helping us realize our kayaking dreams!

Sean and Colton made it to Hudson Bay!

First, unrelated to post title, an update: The kayaks arrived on Friday. Had a great tour of the factory thanks to the wonderful folks at Current Designs and Wenonah Canoe. Jenni and I hit the water for the first time Friday evening. Our Storm GTs are fantastic. I started to wonder if I'd died and woken up in paddling heaven.

More on that soon. First, since the blog was created to jaw about canoe tripping, I want to call deserved attention to two young men whose recent paddling accomplishment far out-paces our little September pleasure cruise.

Some background on this: Minnesota is associated with three epic paddling trips.

(1) Down the Mississippi from Lake Itasca to New Orleans.
(2) Circumnavigation of Lake Superior.
(3) From wherever Up North - a.k.a. Minnesota - to Hudson Bay.

We'd nominate our cross-BWCA paddle to the list at No. 4, but let's be frank: Adventure it may be, our trip is small potatoes compared to these titans. The first two receive lots of press, mainly because they're attempted often. Several books have been written about them. You’ll find books about No. 3, too, notably "Distant Fires" by the late Scott Anderson and, more famously, "Canoeing with the Cree" by Eric Sevareid (who, it should be noted, is also "the late"). But the great 2,200-mile voyage north to Hudson Bay - the domain of large white bears, don't forget - doesn't pop up in the news often. Especially not these days.

Until now.

Colton Witte and Sean Bloomfield are living an adventure of which us cubicle slaves can only dream. They cut short their senior year of high school - don't worry, they still graduated - to set off on a canoe trip of their own. In late April, they launched right from their hometown of Chaska and began canoeing up the Minnesota River...upstream, against strong spring currents. Following Sevareid's route, Colton and Sean paddled up the Minnesota, down the Red River of the North, and across Lake Winnipeg, which I can only imagine must have seemed like the sea. From there, it was north-by-northeast through the lakes and river systems of remote northern Manitoba.

Yesterday, they arrived at York Factory, Manitoba, an outpost at the mouth of the Hayes River. Hudson Bay. They did it in just 49 days. Sevareid and his friend Walter Port took nearly four months.

There are no permanent residents at York Factory, just some Parks Canada employees during the summer months to watch over the grounds and the weathered 177-year-old former Hudson’s Bay Company headquarters building. Darkness falls for just six hours each night this time of year, but permafrost never leaves the ground. And somewhere not far away, out of sight of the eye but not the imagination, polar bears roam.

From the Twin Cities to Hudson Bay. By canoe. In less than two months.

Remarkable.

Awesome, in fact. And not just for distance Sean and Colton covered. I love that these guys decided to attempt (and complete!) the journey, doing it now instead of thinking back later and wishing they’d gone. Perhaps I sound a bit too wistful. I do hope that Gunflint to Ely Canoe will be just the first of many great adventures for Jenni and me. But oh, to have those post-high-school pre-responsibility summers back...how I'd plan them differently now. Maybe that's part of growing up and navigating the quarter-life crisis; you figure stuff out that you'd wish you'd known, and you try to remember for later it so you can pass it on to your kids. Maybe I'll pass along a copy of Canoeing with the Cree, too.

Cheers, Sean and Colton!

You can read all about the their adventure, and how they made it home from Hudson Bay - sounds like a chartered seaplane was waiting Sunday for weather to clear to pick them up - here.

Tuesday update: Nick Coleman's latest column in the Star Tribune offers a taste of what the duo experienced during the final leg of their trip through the Manitoba wilderness. Rapids, waterfalls, exploding bear spray, and ice at Hudson Bay. Read it here.

Picking up paddles

Jenni has been working a lot lately, even on weekends. It's the time of year when the "trail staff," as they are known, come on board at Wilderness Inquiry for the summer. There's been plenty to keep Jenni busy as far as training and helping the staff get into the swing of day events.

Often, those day events involve group canoe trips in W.I.'s voyageur canoes that seat up to 12 people. I'd never seen one in person, so Jenni prodded me to accompany her to a day event on Sunday at St. Paul's Lake Phalen. The event was focused around the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Civilian Conservation Corps, and W.I. was there to provide free canoe rides to anyone who wanted to get out on the lake. This is where W.I. shines: anyone who is interested in paddling can go - even those with disabilities. While we were there, I watched the staff take a family of three out in one of the canoes: mom, dad, and their son who was in a wheelchair. Up until Sunday, I'd wager that was an experience the three of them had never shared.

We arrived early for setup on a humid, gray morning. Lake Phalen was practically glass. Birdsong echoed from the trees. Plenty staff members on hand meant I was most useful staying out of the way, so that's what I did...explored a little bit of the park, sat on the seawall along the shore, and snapped a few pictures of W.I's three beautiful canoes tied up at the dock.

The canoes surely would be appreciated by any paddling enthusiast (photo here). At 24 feet long, they're quite large, and constructed of cedar strips - incomparable to any other watercraft I've seen.

By the time Jenni was ready to take the staff on a proving run on the lake, the steely layer of clouds was pockmarked with brightness, hinting at the promise of a sunny afternoon. Jenni showed the staff their canoing route by manning the stern, while nine of us piled into the rest of the seats. My seat was starboard, last row before the stern.

Despite its size and the number of us weighing it down, the canoe slid through the water with grace. Jenni piloted us up the shore, under a couple of bridges, and through a narrow canal around an island picnic area. It was marvelous to cruise the canal, just a stone's throw from families on the shore and fisherman hoping for a bite. Our course included weaving around a couple of bobbers.

Paddling necessitated a bit more effort: Since I was sitting in the back, I had to coordinate my strokes with the girl ahead of me, who had to paddle in sync with the person ahead of her, and so forth. And being wedged next to someone who's paddling on the port side of the canoe made this operation tricky...I couldn't swing my elbows about as I am wont to do in a normal tandem canoe. This took some getting used to, but eventually I fell into a rhythm - sort of, anyway.

That's about when I started to recall muscles I'd forgotten. It dawned on me just how much preparing I ought to be doing for a solid week of canoing that is now less than three months away. I suppose it's never too late to get started, right?

Fortunately, a remedy should be arriving tomorrow if all goes according to plan. I've already mentioned the kayaks that Jenni and I ordered from Current Designs. Tomorrow, I'm heading to Winona, in far southeastern Minnesota, to pick them up. And, if luck is with us, we should be able to hit the water in our new boats sometime over the weekend.

Reservations - we're officially official

So, it's probably not a smart idea to plan a trip and then start crowing about it on its very own website without officially securing the necessary permits to make the trip in the first place. Right? Right. Well, with 95 days to go the permit is now in place: We punched in the info on the National Recreation Reservation Service web page last night and locked in our entry date: Saturday, September 6.

I admit I wasn't worried about getting a permit, because Entry Point #49: Skipper & Portage Lakes is not a terribly popular jumping off place to begin a BWCA trip. It probably has something to do with the 320-rod portage gateway into the Boundary Waters at Skipper Lake. No grand cliffs, picturesque islands, or easy paddling to mark the passage into wilderness. Instead, it's grunting under the weight of a canoe through a sweaty mile of hot, still, mosquito-infested woods. Or at least that's how I imagine it at this time of year. Actually, I've read that the portage isn't that bad - a gradual uphill for the first 80 or so rods, then relatively flat until Skipper Lake emerges through the foliage.

Why have we chosen such a difficult entry? My Uncle Dan pointed out that we could aim at Long Island Lake from the north, starting from Ham Lake (the origin of 2007's large and destructive forest fire) and entering the Boundary Waters at Cross Bay Lake, eliminating a few lakes and several hundred rods of portaging. True, true. But it's as much about the journey as the destination. Besides, that's a popular route, judging by the fact that its quota of entry permits is already maxed out for a number of days this summer. However, looking at the BWCA reservation website, relatively few canoeists are planning to enter via Skipper Lake this entire year. During vast bouts of Googling earlier this chilly and dreary spring, I learned that the route from Skipper and on through Banadad Lake is lightly traveled and thus makes for a truer wilderness experience. This is the sort of place where wolves howl in earshot of the lucky camper. I hope we'll be as lucky.

We also like starting at Poplar Lake and portaging into Skipper because it's the closest feasible entry point to my cabin. Driving another 10 or 15 miles up the Gunflint Trail for a more accessible put-in feels like slacking. Plus, I love the idea of exploring secret places where few people tread. (Hence our plan to tackle the Frost River, too.)

Jenni and I debated where to pick up our permit. During the reservation process, you have to specify a specific location for permit pick-up - a ranger station or one of a number of resorts and lodges. An outfitter close to our starting point would certainly be convenient. But we settled on the U.S. Forest Service Gunflint District ranger station in Grand Marais for a couple of reasons: One, we figure that the USFS folks will have the most comprehensive set of updates and advisories for our trip, given its breadth. Two, we can brief the rangers on our route. This is not because we want the rangers to think we're special - despite the whole elaborate website-about-the-trip thing - but rather so they know where to look for us in case of an emergency. If, God forbid, another monster windstorm should steamroll through the BWCA during the second week of September, it would be comforting to know that the Forest Service will be looking for us - not unlike the flight plans pilots file with the FAA. This was the suggestion of my grandfather, Otto Christensen, a veteran Canoe Country paddler - and a very good idea at that, especially because our trip will take us through some lightly traveled regions.

Knowledge is power, that's for sure. But at what point do you pass it up to experience the thrill of discovery? Jenni and I debated this last night. I'm a studier, a researcher, an information-looker-uper. I suppose it's my training as a journalist. I like to know as much as I can about a situation, lest I blunder into it unprepared. Fortunately for types such as myself, excellent guidebooks to the Boundary Waters (like the one at right) are readily available. They cover every entry point, describe most lakes, point out the best campsites, and offer warnings about which portages are likely to make even the most docile canoeist curse like a sailor. Already, I've paused in Barnes & Noble and REI to glance through a couple of these books, each time mentally downloading a few tidbits that might be helpful for our trip.

My most recent Barnes & Noble diversion was yesterday. Later, I asked Jenni if we should pick up a book in the interest of more thorough preparation (which, by the way, has a bonus: I don't ever need to stop and ask for directions!).

Jenni's response: "I don't like books like that." What?! Because, she continued, it takes all of the fun out of discovering things for yourself.

Hmmm.

Well, maybe. I suppose Jenni has a point. It's good to go out and have an adventure without knowing everything about the place you're going. Maybe there's some peace-of-mind while packing if you already have the prime campsites circled and the steep portages denoted. But then, the day of, does that lead to dread of the awful carry ahead, or disappointment knowing the best campsite on the lake is already taken? There might be some wisdom to Jenni's lack of consulting books. (Who am I kidding? She's my wife! Of course she's wise.)

Anyway, what do you think? Is it better to read the guide books and know your route, or to follow the map and discover it as you go?

We invite you to leave us a comment and share your thoughts.

The weekend that happened when we made other plans

Right about now, my plan was to be putting together our website's first photo gallery: "Eric and Jenni's first 2008 canoe outing" or something with a similarly bland title, featuring photos of us, in a canoe, plying the chilly blue waters of Bear Island Lake. Thinking about those images, I can feel the sun on my face, hear the dip and gurgle of paddles hitting the lake, see the haze of spring green spreading through the woods on shore.

It's all in my imagination.

Like 90 percent of the state's not-living-Up-North population, Jenni and I planned to spend Memorial Day weekend...where else? Up North. At her family's cabin, to be precise, for a weekend with the whole kit 'n' kaboodle - her mom and dad, brother, his wife, and their two children. Thursday evening last week, the phone rang. Jenni answered, and it was easy to infer, hearing her half of the conversation, that the trip was in doubt. When Jenni hung up, she explained: Her grandmother had fallen and broken her hip (not the first time, apparently), was in the hospital and headed to surgery on Friday. This seemed like not the most opportune weekend to head north to an isolated cabin without a phone or electricity. Understandably so.

(Before we move on: Despite suffering through a minor heart attack while under the scalpel, Grandma pulled through and was doing well enough by the end of the weekend to throw a drinking straw at her doctors, presumably because she did not care for them - or the food.)

The turn of events left us with a wide-open weekend. So, as the sun slipped behind the horizon Thursday, Jenni and I cleaned up the kitchen and discussed what our alternate plans could be. Go to the cabin anyway, without the rest of the family? No, that would seem rude and irresponsible, Jenni said. (I agreed.) Have another overnight adventure to somewhere? No, too much work to pack up a tent and all of that stuff just for one night, I said. Go for a really long, adventurous bike ride on the Root River Trail in southeastern Minnesota? Only if we bike the whole length and camp at the end, and ride back to the car the next day, Jenni said. (The trail is 40-something miles long.) Well, see my previous comment about not camping.

We settled on something slightly less ambitious: Sticking close to home. Everything has a silver lining, and the weekend would, too: We still made it out on the water with paddles in hand. With the cabin trip scuttled, we would be home for a kayak demo sponsored by REI at Weaver Lake, just a few blocks from home.

I was anxious to be in a boat again - and to try out the bright blue PFD I'd bought at REI a couple of weeks back. It's a long way from the crusty, dirt-stained armada of life jackets moored in the closet at my cabin. Those are vintage Stearns life vests - first or second generation - faded orange, with industrial-strength zippers, in the design that my grandfather pioneered (you've Maurice O'Link to thank that PFDs aren't still variations of the foam neck-strangler). I'm still proud to wear those old life jackets, emblazoned with the Stearns logo, but they're not very comfortable - or practical - in a kayak. The new vest, however, fits me like a glove, and was thoughtfully designed for the arm movement that comes with paddling and a high-cut back that would fit a kayak seat. And it looks sporty.

Feeling only slightly foolish, I hopped on my bike with my royal blue PDF zipped securely around me, and Jenni and I headed off to the beach Saturday morning. (Jenni's brief explanation to the neighbors that we were headed to Weaver Lake to go kayaking was appreciated.)

We arrived just in time to beat the crowds and tried several boats. The blasting west wind notwithstanding, it was a perfect morning. We slid into 14-foot kayaks, then tried a 16- and 17 footer, to get a sense how they handled differently. The 14 was nimble and easy to turn, while he 17 boat's turning radius felt like I was piloting an ore boat. But the 17-footer was sleeker, faster, and tracked better through the waves. My PDF was perfectly comfortable, and it was thrilling to be on the water for the first time in more than seven months.

The demo could not have come at a better time, for on Tuesday Jenni placed an order with Current Designs kayaks for two boats of our own. We opted for two 17-foot boats, based on their speed, efficiency, and cargo-carrying capacity that will likely play a hand in future adventures. As it turns out, Current Designs is now part of Wenonah Canoe (or "We-no-nah," as you'll see it emblazoned on the sides of canoes throughout the north), a Minnesota company headquartered in Winona. Our boats should be ready for pickup in a couple of weeks. (Though we will assuredly use a canoe for our Gunflint to Ely canoe trip, essential because of the many portages along the route.)

We've had a few calls and e-mails from people asking us if we survived Sunday's storms that tore through the north metro. That caught us off guard, because we hadn't watched the news Sunday evening. In fact, we were out on the Mississippi River when the storms hit, checking out a few canoe landings and campsites with Jenni's boss, Wilderness Inquiry Executive Director Greg Lais. (This was a work-related trip for Jenni; I was invited to tag along.) We had motored from Hidden Falls Park in St. Paul all the way down to the Gray Cloud Island area, and were on the way back when the storm rolled through. As we puttered through the no-wake zone along the downtown St. Paul waterfront, the sky above the city grew progressively darker and more threatening. Tendrils of black clouds hung low and swirled above us. A gust of wind caught Greg's hat and blew it into the river. Spray whipped off the water, and the gusts kicked up clouds of dust on the shore. Half expecting a funnel cloud to drop from the clouds, we gunned the 90-horse outboard and got the hell out of there. This, we later learned, would have been about the time that an EF3 tornado was ravaging neighborhoods in Hugo.

Thankfully, there was no damage in our neck of the woods.