9-12-18 Wednesday
With Emily freshly back from Alaska we took off on a adventure to the Boundary Waters. We chose to go to the far East and drove up the Arrowhead Trail. Weather is beautiful and calm when we paddled out onto McFarland Lake. The portage into Pine Lake was a piece of cake & Emily got to stay in the canoe as I pulled the boat through a small canal. We had a long paddle down Pine and found the campsites we wanted were full. It was getting late and I was very hungry so we made a decision to paddle to the other side of the lake to check out our last hope (beating a group of four canoes). We found an amazing site under some large pine trees.
Tent and tarp setup.
The landing.
Wednesday night we watched a large thunderstorm roll by to the north with lots of lightning. We only got some light sprinkles. Quite the show. The rest of the night consisted of a campfire and burning a lot of sticky pine cones.
9-13-18 Thursday
We woke to clear skies and an amazing sunrise
At the end of Pine Lake we hiked up to Johnson Falls. A beautiful series of waterfalls.
We paddled through Little Caribou & Caribou. At the end was a long portage into Clearwater. We single portaged (canoe + pack on my shoulders) it which hurt but saved time. Clearwater Lake has huge cliffs and lives up to it's name with super clear water. Back in 2012 we hiked to the top of one of the cliffs on a day trip.
At the end of the portage
One of the cliffs
Towards the end of Clearwater we scored an amazing campsite with great swimming, large white pines, and a great view. During dinner prep multiple red squirrels dropped pine cones from tall heights. It would have hurt to get hit by one. I forgot to take photos of the site.
9-14-18 Friday
The good weather continues. We had a portage right away into Mountain Lake which is a border lake with Canada. A tail wind pushed us a long. During the paddle we saw a few markers drilled into the rocks along the shore.
Beautiful paddling and great weather. Trees and water as far as a person can see. After three portages we made it into Moose Lake where we found a great campsite in the Cedar trees. When scouting the site Emily spotted a folding saw! A sweet find. Someone had spent a lot of time making a dock out of rocks, an amazing fireplace, and great benches at this site.
9-15-18 Saturday
There was some rain in the early morning and strong winds but they passed by. After breakfast & packing up we had a short paddle and then a portage in Canada. The portage lead us to North Fowl Lake where tons of wild rice grows. The final paddling consisted of a lot of bushwacking through wild rice and swamps. The Royal River was also a challenge at times because it is a large swamp with no clear path.
We thought about staying one last night in the BWCA but we were less than a mile from the car so we headed to Grand Marais to explore and eat at the Angry Trout.
