Every June, for as many days as we can squeeze away, Brandon and I make the journey to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Like many years before-we chose an entry point along the Gunflint Trail, this year we went in through the Portage and Skipper Lake entry point. Permits were still available despite us choosing late this year (remember back-Brandon had knee surgery?) likely due to the large 300+ rod portage to start the loop.

This year, to maximize our days, we drove the 5 hours north on the day of entry for our permit which also happened to be our 5th Wedding Anniversary.

There is always a bit of stress when you’re starting late for the day knowing:

• You’ll have to move through several lakes before finding camp sites and hoping for an open one
• Portaging in the dark if you don’t find a site is dangerous
• Setting up camp after the sun goes down and the bugs come out for real is pretty close to hell

But we found one! A beautiful site a few lakes in. We had dinner in day light, managed enough of a fire not to be eaten completely, and slept through the night until the early morning fog greeted us with one of the most spectacular views.

The next morning we took off! When we have many portages Brandon often takes the bow; he can help us land, pass me the large pack, load up the food barrel, grab the canoe and we’re off!

When possible we prefer to single portage: carry all of our gear in just one load-the ultimate grocery carry! A few things allow us to make this possible.

1. We pack intentionally and fairly light weight.
2. We don’t have a bunch of things loose in the boat.
3. We don’t often fish on travel days: we prefer to keep the rods stowed, get to camp efficiently and then fish.
4. This is a big one….Brandon can carry a pack AND a canoe and both are light enough to be plausible.

We had read some reports about this area that described the portages as ‘rugged’. We now understand that to mean-rarely used, hard to find, bushwhack-esk. But the real portage adventure was leaving Long Island Lake and having to climb several feet over a beaver dam to load gear and ourselves into our boat. Beaver dams are pretty common in the BW, but changing elevation with them was a first for me.

Despite the terrible black flies due to an incredibly damp spring, we had a few days of wonderful weather followed by a few days of the coldest! Thawing out back in Grand Marais after felt amazing!

This year, new to our gear list was a Garmin In-Reach mini. We don’t use the tracking function so far, and we don’t send messages to ‘check in with family’ but we did enjoy pulling basic weather reports for the area. Having an updated forecast, along with the marine forecast we can grab from the radio allowed us to make some decisions about traveling that we really enjoyed!

Overall we had an exceptionally relaxing trip. Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy the video and have some fun on your next Days Off.