Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness

View Larger Map

Behold, I add a story to all of the posted pictures.  (Before the month's even up!)

So...  Ali and I had been hoping for a trip up to the Boundary Waters while we're in the Midwest.  And it is beautiful up there.  Another pair of our grad school friends came with, and while we were all familiar with being outside, Ali was the only one with any canoe tripping experience.  (Apparently river trips don't count, since there isn't extensive portaging - ahem, portaahshing - involved.)  We had an 8-day trip, with six of those days on water.  The first night out of Madison we spent at a Superior National Forest campground just outside of Ely, MN (one of two major entry points, rhymes with really).  The entire campground was really, really well-maintained, and our lake-accessible site was stellar.  It was by far the best Forest campground I've seen thus far.  We had an ok dinner in Ely, a good night's sleep (at least for me), and both a flat tire and a delectable diner breakfast in the morning.  I'm starting to think that adventuring up north just does not mix well with me and cars. Once our tire was patched in town, we got out to Canadian Border Outfitters, who rented us kevlar canoes/paddles/pfds and a SPOT GPS tracker.  While there are probably a lot of good companies up there, CBO was an excellent choice.  We got a motor-tow (think aluminum fishing boat + motor + canoe roof-rack) out to Ensign Lake - point B on the map - from the outfitter - point A on Moose Lake.  And that got us out of the highly trafficked area pretty nicely.  The remaining points were our nightly campsites and the take-out on Lake One (as sent by the SPOT).

I'll add more specifics to each of the days' posts, but there are a couple more general observations.
(1) I've definitely underestimated canoe camping.  I'm sure our trip's timing helped (post-prelim B for Ali and me, post-mosquito season for the lakes, and post-school-starting-back for crowd control), but the lakes were wonderfully serene, and I can't remember being many other places that have such stark beauty.  Yes, there were some tough bits with the long portages (which Ali did without complaint), the rain, and some sore shoulders.  However, the pace was completely up to us, and it was incredibly easy to fall into the longish trip mentality where all you have to worry about is eating, sleeping, and doing something that's pretty awesome - in this case, paddling.
(2) Portaging isn't half as bad as I thought it might be.  The trails were really pretty and well-maintained, and having a canoe that only weighed 42 lbs didn't hurt either.  There was only one super-uncomfy portage for me, and it turned out that neither Ali nor I had checked the orientation of the yoke - bad idea.  Another bad idea - having an unbalanced canoe with big chunks of padding that weren't well placed.  Thankfully, a nalgene and a bunch of tweaking made the canoe much easier to carry by the end of the week.  *You should probably completely disregard my opinion of portaging, since my share of the portages maxed out with one around 100 rods and a weight around 55-60 lbs.  Ali carried our boat the entire first half of the week (heavier packs then - and yes, we would carry our pack and the canoe at the same time), and her long portages more than doubled the length of my long portage. The other couple also had their own canoe-carrying, and they were fighting off colds.
(3) The BWCA and the sister Quetico Provencial Park have a ton of options that are accessible as you want them to be.  There were a ton of people within a day's paddle of the entry points, even though school's back in session.  Just past that day's paddle, we might have seen one other canoe per day.  We definitely didn't camp near anyone or have any issues with campsites until the last two nights.  I had been hoping for a longer, 60-mile route with lots of small lakes, but even after we abandoned that plan on the second day out, we still had a quality backcountry experience.  The further out you get, the more of a wilderness experience you can have, and rumor has it that both Quetico and the specially-permitted areas of the BWCAW are awesomely wilderness-y.  Our campsites and portages were pretty obvious/nicely kept, but you can find some absolute bushwhacking.
(4) As far as maps go, there are two popular series for the Boundary Waters:  Fischer and Mackinzie.  I think for our originally-planned trip, we would have had to get something like 6-7 maps + even more for the just-in-case route that we ended up taking.  Instead, we went for 2 National Geographic maps.  We got lost twice.  Once we couldn't find a portage (which could have just been our uncertainty on the first day out), so we took an alternate portage (+ a lot of unnecessary paddling).  The second time, there were way more campsites than marked on the map, which confused our way to the take-out (this could be due to some post-fire reconstruction); we ended up caravan-ing with a bunch of canoeists who knew where they were going.  Both happened on large lakes near entry points.  Thankfully, the small lakes further out were very easy to navigate.  I think I might still be reasonably happy with our (2! waterproof!) maps, but I'm also glad all the confusion happened where there were other people and other routes.
(5)  The SPOT was kinda a cool thing to send stuff to our families and to have in case of emergency.  As an actual adventure tool, it's added weight that doesn't even tell you where you are.  It was nice for this kind of trip, but I don't see myself ever buying one.