This was my seventh backwoods canoe trip. It was a 16 mile loop - where you start on a lake and portage and canoe in a big circle. The loop included about 6 miles of portaging and 10 of canoeing. The trip was taken in September of 2006 and lasted 5 days. This was the shortest of all of my trips. I traveled from SW lower Michigan around the bottom of Lake Michigan through Chicago entering Wisconsin above Rockford IL. Then we travel completely through Wisconsin entering Minnesota at Duluth. From there, we travel all the way along the coast of Lake Superior to Grand Marias. Man, is that a long trip. The next morning, we drove another 65 miles down the Gunflint Trail passing the Lurentian Divide which I thought was cool. At the entry point, we were only about 2 miles from the Canadian border.
Total time I have spent doing this is about 55 days. Oh, my wife and I rented
this cabin for a week and did the same type of canoeing/hiking. All this for our honeymoon - what a girl! Having said all that, over the years I have trimmed things down quite a bit so the list is short but here goes.
1.) Five Gallon buckets: They are for: mainly carrying food and breakables like the gas stove and water filter. I think they also cut down on the food smell as to not attract bear and other animals. They also come in handy for washing dishes and carrying water for bathes.
I will leave them behind next year because they are a little awkward to carry and on the longer portages (anything over 1/2 mile) they start cutting through your hands. They are a whole lot of fun to hang at night when it's dark and someone says "hey, we going to have to hang the food". This is usually done for me about 1000 feet from camp and that walk at night can be pretty scary at times. These will be replaced maybe with a sea bag-type duffel which is waterproof so it should be smell-proof.
2.) I also have a paddle that is bent so it is more ergonomical to paddle. You can see it sticking out to the right of the white 5 gallon bucket that is laying horizontal. This paddle cost me $125.00. It is very pretty but it is very useless in my opinion.
I will leave it behind next time because it is shaped in a very subtle way. And, when you are portaging your canoe, the goal is to take as much as you can in as few trips possible. Well this paddle is like trying to carry a sheet of plywood on the roof of your Ford Focus. You can do it but it is a pain.
3.) As for boots, I think I will just get a pair of portaging shoes or a sacrificial pair of tennis shoes ( NOT CHEAP ONES) they are much lighter than boots.
4.) I will also try to leave my jeans behind. These are heavier than nylon or a light cotton pant and just don't dry out very fast despite being very durable.
5.) I never take these items:
a. Fishing gear
b. Books
c. Friends who you really don't know
d. A comb because I'm bald (Hint for next weeks WW)
6.) Things you can't leave behind.
a. First aid kit
b. Maps (I use Topo USA Parks version): They have all the contour lines and can be printed to any scale you want. So every boat gets a set of custom maps showing route and waypoints for campsites.
c. Route programmed GPS unit. I use a Garmin III Plus which works well for navigation.
d. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER (I can't stress this enough) get into a canoe without a life jacket! "You may not make it if you dump but at least they'll find your body" was my brother's saying
e. Water filter and water storage bag
f. A good camp cook! Not including yourself. Although I enjoyed it, cooking for three people on fire and camp gas stove with no refrigerator is not a lot of fun.
For the comments on my canoe, I built this one back in 1999 and it has been on all my BWCA trips with me. I have a total of about 150 miles on it. I paddle solo as to avoid getting peeved with a paddling partner. It is 13'-4" inches long and doesn't paddle worth beans but it makes for a very interesting trip. Its best quality? It is very maneuverable. You aso have to be two steps ahead of the wind. It is a Laker design built out of the book from
Gill Gilpatrick. The canoe is made from western red cedar strips cut 5/16 thick x 3/4. They are beaded and coved, then glued with white glue, sanded, and then fiber glassed. I hand cane all of my seats.
Anyway, I'm leaving for the
U.P. at 3:am on Friday morning and it is now 12:21 am Thursday and I need to get up at 5:00 am.
Hope you enjoyed this post. If so leave a comment and please forgive me if I haven't left any comments on your site as I'm kind of just learning this blog environment. I had my moderate comments turned on and now it's too late. This will be my last computer entry until Tuesday of next week.
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