It’s been a busy summer doing things like building a fence and working for food, but one of the highlights was a trip to the Boundary Waters in mid-June.

Here’s what I learned:

1. Kayaks (especially the plastic kind) are a *#$%## to portage.  Next time: Kevlar canoe. Double portages won’t be necessary and I might keep my sanity.

2. Better shoes than trail hikers would help on muddy, rocky portages.  We did OK, but everything was muddy this June.  It was so wet it was hard to find dry firewood.

3. You can never travel too light.  There are things I would leave home next time, although we did a reasonable job of reducing everything into a set of gear that probably didn’t exceed thirty pounds for two people. Kayaking probably forced us to get used to a level of gear that would work out very easily in a canoe.

4. bwca.com is a great resource and pumping campsite info, portages, etc. into the GPS made finding things very convenient. (Yes, we did have maps and compasses for backup).  

5. Finding campsites early in the day was a bit of advice I was given prior to our trip, and it was wise.  We got the last campsite on the lake we wanted.  If we had not been able to camp there, another long portage would have loomed at the end of the day.  We also made camp as it started pouring for a few hours.

6. A waterproof digital camera was worth its weight in gold.  My wife bought me an Olympus Stylus Tough 6000 that was my constant companion.  The pictures of our trip show some great memories.

7. Get in shape before you go.  I should have done a better job of getting out and getting active before we left on our trip this spring.  Although I survived and didn’t collapse, a lot of things probably would have seemed just a little bit easier if I was in tip-top shape.

8. Prepare, prepare, prepare.  We began our preparations as soon as we applied for our permit in January.  A couple of trial runs in the kayaks close to home made us feel very comfortable once we put in with all of our gear on the trip itself.

9. Make a checklist before you go and use it.  I modified a packing list someone posted on the Internet and thought it through many times before we left.

10. Talk to people who have been there.  I gained a lot of useful information by asking really stupid questions of people who had made Boundary Waters trips.

11. (I always have to turn it up to 11!) Wear a boonie hat. They’re awesome!

Now for some photos to prove we’ve been there:

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