Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Northern Minnesota Lake Country - BWCA

The BWCA - Boundary Waters Canoe Area is a 1.09 million acre wilderness area located within the Superior National Forest in Northern Minnesota.  The BWCA is renowned as a destination for both canoing and fishing on its many lakes, and is the most visited wilderness in the United States.  The BWCA is located on the U.S.-Canadian border, and along with Voyageurs National Park to the west and the Canadian Quetico they make up a large area of contiguous wilderness lakes and forests called the "Quetico-Superior country", or simply the Boundary Waters.  Lake Superior lies to the east of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.  The two main communities with visitor services near the BWCA are Ely and Grand Marais, Minnesota.  The smaller town of Tofte is another gateway community to the BWCA. Several historic roads, such as the Gunflint Trail, the Echo Trail, and Fernberg Road allow access to the many wilderness entry points of the BWCA.  The BWCA contains over a thousand lakes. Fishing in the BWCA can be some of the best in Minnesota. Game species include walleye, northern pike, largemouth and smallmouth bass, yellow perch, whitefish and lake trout, among others.  When fishing in the BWCA, a multiple-sectioned or collapsible fishing rod is easiest to carry while portaging.

When I was in high school my very outdoorsy aunt took her three sons and my friend, Lois (one room school house, Lois) , and me on a couple of boundary waters' canoe trips.  I have vague memories about a lot of it but I vividly remember the spectacular feeling of being alone in the vast and silent outdoors for a week or more.  Being in untouched nature surrounded by nothing but more untouched nature made us feel settled and peaceful; something quite often lacking during those teenage years. 


We paddled and we portaged ...

and we swam and we fished and we dug latrines and we ate food cooked over a campfire and we slept in tents or on the top of a cliff in our sleeping bags staring at the unbelievable array of stars and we hung our food in a knapsack from a tree branch at night to keep it out of reach of the bears. 

We saw a moose up close and personal and my aunt was very careful to whisper to us that moose are dangerous critters and we needed to be silent and non-threatening.   We pulled into an island one late afternoon to set up camp and as we went ashore it was apparent that someone had camped there not too much earlier and had been visited by a bear.  We, being of sound mind, paddled on to the next island and camped there.  Bears win.  

A few memories center around the ludicrous: 

1.  My oldest cousin started out driving us from our hometown  to Ely, Minnesota, where we would begin our adventure.  He and my aunt and my youngest cousin were in the front seat and we three remaining were in the back seat (surrounded by a lot of paraphernalia I might add).  After traveling down the road for a time on the two lane highway, the car just veered off into the lane of oncoming traffic.  Luckily my aunt had seen it coming and grabbed the wheel and, luckily, there was no one coming from the opposite direction. 

How did that happen?  Well, my cousin had fallen asleep; sound asleep at the wheel of the car.  He suffered from white line fever.  After looking at the white line dividing the lanes for a while it had a hypnotic effect and bam... out like a light.   I can tell you that when he took a turn driving after that all of us were at full attention ready to save the day.  It didn't happen again.  My aunt, wise as she was, pointed out to him that he didn't need to continuously stare at the white line and that when he looked elsewhere for a second or two the pull of the hypnotic effect would be broken.  

2.  As we were pushing away from the dock in Ely, Minnesota, where we had rented all the equipment and loaded the canoes, my youngest cousin was rummaging through his knapsack for something and dropped his toothbrush into the lake where it promptly sunk to the bottom.  You think about not brushing your teeth for a week.  You think about others' reactions to you after not brushing your teeth for a week. Since we were a resourceful lot, we taught him how to put toothbrush on a washcloth and rub it around producing kinda' clean teeth and sweet smelling breath. 

http://www.elyoutfitters.com/  (I don't think we used them but who knows)

3.   The first night we set up camp (we moved to a new camp almost every night although I think we stayed in the same camp for a couple nights a time or two.) the same cousin who had doomed his toothbrush to Davy Jones' Locker had a hissy fit because there wasn't any ice cream for dessert.   Ice cream.   Obviously this was a city boy. Nothing like hauling around rapidly melting ice in a chest when you are also portaging canoes and backpacks and oars and a cast iron frying pan and fishing poles and more for upwards of a mile and a half at a go.  

We ate lots of pancakes and lots of fish (that we caught and cleaned ourselves) and the food tasted divine.  There was dessert!  Marshmallows to roast over the campfire.  Splendid evenings sitting on the beach roasting marshmallows and just relishing the sound of the lapping waves on the beach and the starry sky. 

4.  I only remember it raining hard ....really hard... once.  We were in our tent (there were two tents with three of us occupying each of them) Lois, youngest cousin and me and the water started to leak in around the tent flap.  We were already cold and grumpy and the leak was just an added annoyance.  My youngest cousin to the rescue!  He blocked the leak!  Yea!  When the storm finally stopped we learned that rather than stick his finger in the dike, our cousin had blocked the leak with our only knapsack of dry, clean clothes.  From hero to zero in a nanosecond.   

I look back on those two trips very fondly and am so thankful to my aunt for arranging them.  I realize now how much work was involved for her and how much she endured as the single adult with 5 teenagers in tow.   Thanks, Lorraine, for creating such wonderful experiences and later such wonderful memories for me!