BWAC 2013

This July, as a celebration of the last brother of the fearsome foursome getting married, we took 5 days to enjoy the beautiful Boundary Waters Canoe Area.
We put in at Lake One East of Ely.  From there, we had a failed attempt at a shortcut which ended up being a fun adventure.  We drug the canoes upstream and found a honey hole for smallies.  In the middle of me taking one out of the net, another one grabbed my rattletrap that was sitting over the side of the boat! It was a Blue Fox Silver Rattle trap, and my only one, so I will have to get another one of those! We ran into big rapids that we could not go around, and thus, we took the boats back down the rapids, and headed back into the lake.  After a couple portages, we continued Eastward into Lake Three.  We got hit with a nice rainfall on our last portage, and it got most of our stuff pretty wet.

That afternoon, we setup shop on a beautiful campsite on an island on the South side of Lake Three.  The rain came hard about 8PM.  Luckilly,  our tent was under some pines that helped battle the downpour.  We also setup a tarp which acted as an extra roof over our tent.  It rained and stormed from 8PM to about 430 AM.  There wasn't room for our packs in the tent, which resulted in a lot of wet clothes and backpacks, but we stayed dry in the tent, which was a blessing.  We got around 12 inches of rain that night.

Jim and I won the smart guys award by forgetting sleeping pads.  The ground/rock wasn't the softest to sleep on for four nights, and thus my hips and shoulders were not happy with me come Monday.(or at anytime for that matter) Speaking of smart guy award, you'd think after several camping outings and parties, I'd have remembered that Pole and Jim can saw logs like Paul Bunyan, but you'd be wrong.  Note to self...bring earplugs when sleeping next to either of these two.

We also played a lot of cards every night.  It was a nice way to wind down.  500, whist, hell and back, and smear.  Jimmy talked a big game after he and Gus beat up on Matt and I Wednesday night in Hoyt, only to be brought back down to earth the last night.  We did however find the correct way of scoring and playing nula.  After Pole made a grand call essentially blind, we deduced it was way overvalued at 500.

Nula = 150  Show Nula = 250   Grand Nula = 350 . With Grand, your partner gets the kitty, and the bidder gets nothing.  Double Show Grand = 450.  Bidder gets kiddy, sends it back to partner, then they lay down their hands.

Friday we portaged into Horseshoe Lake which was ravaged by the fire.


Gus and I hung out on the point while Jim and Pole went to Polock Mountain.  Gus of course had to push down some burnt trees.
We didn't have much luck with the fishing on Horseshoe.  It was pretty windy and thus controlling the canoe on the bigger lake was a bit of a challenge.  Before Gus and I went home, we looked around the lake for Jim and Pole and could not find them.  We deduced with our flawless logic that they must have ditched us and began our trek home.  We got home, and about 30 minutes later, the boys pulled in to a full moon welcome.

American Dagger Moth

We ate like kings this entire trip.  Jim Jacobson is one hell of a chef.  We had an awesome Iron Grate over the fire that Jimmy worked like it insulted his mother.  Jimmy used a cast iron pan,a pot and a makeshift percolator, to make us coffee every morning, bacon, pancakes, jalapeno venacin burrito brats, fish, potates w/veggies, hashbrowns w/egg bake, oatmeal, sausage, beans, and more fish.

Saturday we paddled and portaged to Lake Insula. This was close to 20 miles of paddling, and a fair dosage of portages.  Gus was not the biggest fan of the portage to Insula. (nor were my shoulders)We went through Lake Four, and Hudson Lake before getting to Insula.  There were some incredible rapids that with a kayak, skirt, and helmet would be an absolute blast...without them, a potential disaster.

Jimmy caught a smally with shoulders up in Insula,  I caught one trolling with a rattle trap.  On the way out of Insula, we ran into a canoe of guys that knew me! They played on the softball team Ten Catchers and knew me from the SLP softball league I play in.  It was the black dude who played first and another guy on the team.Small world.

The class five portage on the way out of Hudson was where we caught our dinner.  The eyes were packed in there and we picked them up with white jigs and worm.

 It was great to not have to worry about catching dinner after that. Everyone caught some fish.  We headed back to camp and made good time paddling hard after we caught dinner.

One great part of this trip was everybody chipping in to help out.  I'd cut the fish up, while Pole would start the fire, Gus would be gathering more firewood, and Jimmy would be getting dinner ready.  Everyone was contributing(some more than others(James had breakfast made and coffee done multiple mornings before the other yahoos were even out of the tent)), and it kind of felt like we had our own little tribe on that island.

Sunday we were blessed with another beautiful day, and we soaked it up.  We hiked around Horseshoe on some trails, crossed a river over a tree, found a memorial, jumped off some rocks and went swimming.

We debated leaving in the middle of the night to go back and play Mario soccer.  Gus and I argued for leaving (we had a full moon and extra head lamps) as we wanted the adventure.  Matt and Jim, argued the more rational side of waiting till morning.   We compromised to packing up that night and leaving at 5 am to play some soccer once we got to Hoyt.  Not an ounce of regret was had with that decision.

It was a beautiful morning and the wind was at our backs.  It felt almost fall like it was so cool.  It was a great trip and I look forward to reuniting with my Beaver Brothers soon.