In July 1995 I was working as an Assistant Scoutmaster with my son's Boy Scout Troop when we took a 10-day trip into Ontario's Quetico Provincial Wilderness Park. That was my first wilderness canoe trip and my first trip of any kind to the "north country." That was the trip that a lifetime of car camping and backpacking had been looking for and I was hooked. The first order of business after returning home was to start planning a follow-up trip with my wife. As it turns out it would be another two years before I could get back, and even then time constraints dictated a 4-night trip, so instead of Quetico, we opted for a shorter trip in the U.S. side of the border.
This was the second trip for my son and I and the first trip for my wife Dorothy, who is also an avid camper. Also traveling with us was my son's friend, Paul. Paul was a member of our Scout troop, but had been unable to go on any of the troop's high adventure trips, so this was also a first for him. The boys were 16 years old; I was 45 and my wife 44.
Written in 2001, this is my remembrance of that trip.
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We set out from Murfreesboro, TN early on a Saturday morning in July of 1997, headed up I-24 to Nashville, then north on I-65, stopping for breakfast at an "Awful House" near Bowling Green, KY. We then made the long boring drive through the cornfields of Indiana and skirted the edge of Chicago on a swelteringly hot day while listening to the Cubs lose another one on WGN radio. We finished a 14-hour day in Osseo, Wisconsin, checked in to the Rodeway Inn, had supper and fell into bed.
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After an early breakfast at the Norske Nook we continued north. Made a shopping stop at the Gander Mountain on US-53 on the north side of Duluth, then continued on to Ely. We arrived at Beland's Borderlakes Canoe Outfitters on Moose Lake, checked in, drew our packs, made final arrangements for the next morning, ate at the lodge, then went to bed.
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After a huge pancake breakfast at the lodge, we loaded our gear into the outfitter's van and were taken to Snowbank Lake. There was quite a crowd at the landing, but we eventually got our canoes loaded and headed off, looking for the portage to Parent Lake. While this was my second trip, on the first one I had done no navigating, so this was my first time to really have to look at the Fisher maps and figure things out. I actually started out depending TOO much on my compass and instead of just looking at the map and the terrain and shoreline. My initial compass reading suggested the portage was behind the island to the west of the landing, so we headed for the north end of the island, then turned south before starting to look for the portage on the west shore. This ended up in some backtracking up the shore before discovering the portage right next to the Wilderness Bay resort.
Dorothy and I have done a lot of backpacking, but the first time she picked up a Duluth pack, the weight and balance were quite a bit different than she expected, and she nearly fell over backwards! She quickly adjusted, however, and we made the portage to Parent without incident. The portage from Parent to Disappointment was flat, swampy (with at least one small wooden bridge), buggy, and hot.
Disappointment looked like a pretty lake, and I would have liked to have spent more time on it, but we began to get the feeling that campsites could be at a premium, so our sightseeing was mostly going from one site to the next, looking for an open one. We stopped for lunch on a rock shelf about two-thirds of the way up the lake, then pushed on, checking the remaining campsites.
When we came to the portage to Ahsub, I left Dorothy and Robert at the Disappointment end and took Paul and a canoe over to Ahsub. Paul went on alone to check the campsite behind the island on the north shore, directly opposite the portage. If it was available, he was to paddle back just far enough to clear the island and signal me, then stay and hold the site while I went and got Dorothy and Robert. The site was open, so we proceeded to complete the portage.
While we were loading up to cross Ahsub, a young couple came up from the campsite just west of the portage, headed for Disappointment. They were paddling a beautiful cedar strip canoe. They were recently married, and the canoe had been built by his father as a wedding present! It was a real work of art.
Made camp, cooked supper (Boboli pizzas), swam, and generally loafed the rest of the day.
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I awoke this morning with no appetite, no energy, and a general feeling of dread and doom. We decided it must just be a letdown from the excitement and over exertion of the previous day, so decided to call a layover day. I started pushing dried fruit and Gatorade and began to recover. Robert and I decided to take a trip over to Jitterbug to check it out and do some fishing. We're both lousy fishermen, but it was a pretty little lake, full of water lilies. The Jitterbug end of the portage was pretty mucky, and Robert went thigh deep in "moose poop."
When we got back, Dorothy reported that a ranger had stopped by and "reminded" her that Ahsub was a stocked rainbow trout lake and couldn't be fished without a special trout permit, which we did not have.
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As soon as I got up, I started to lower the bear bag to start breakfast. It got away from me and gave me a pretty good rope burn. Lesson: NEVER handle ropes under tension without leather gloves! We ate, packed, and headed off.
Going into Jitterbug (again) there were some logs floating in the muck alongside the put-in. After walking out on one and dropping the canoe in the water next to it, I noticed a large spike sticking up out of the log. A few inches closer and that spike would have hit the canoe. I don't know if it would have punctured the Kevlar or not. I know it's the stuff bulletproof vests are made of, but those canoes feel pretty fragile.
It was a bit of a maze through the hummocks of grass getting out the north side of Jitterbug. When we got to Adventure Lake, Dorothy and I went to locate the portage while the boys tried to locate some fish. While loafing near the portage, we saw a white tailed deer on shore and paddled past a beaver lodge, where we could hear the occupants snuffling around inside.
After crossing to Cattyman Lake, things began to get hectic. The landing for the portage to Gibson was crowded with several crews, all heading the same direction. There were way too many people and canoes for the "9-man, 4-boat" limit. At first, we tried waiting off-shore until some of the crowd cleared, but they didn't seem to be in any hurry, and there were still more people coming in from Jordan Lake and pushing on in ahead of us. We finally decided we had no choice but to simply join the crowd and try to get across as best we could. There was a beautiful waterfall on this portage, but we had no time to stop and enjoy it. That waterfall was probably one of the reasons the portage was so crowded. It appeared that every crew there was more interested in playing in the creek than in clearing the portage.
While on Gibson, we pulled over on to shore to have lunch and wait for some of the crews to clear the portage to Ashigan.
When we arrived on Ashigan, we checked the first campsite, on the south shore just west of the portage. It was taken, so I told Robert and Paul to check the one directly across the lake and the one in the northeast corner near the portage to Ensign, while Dorothy and I went to check the one at the west end of the lake. Whoever found an open site was to paddle far enough out into the lake to be in sight of the other boat, then wave a red bandana. If we both found sites, we'd opt for the one at the west end. This plan worked and we ended up at the western-most site.
It was still early afternoon so after camp was made we went fishing for supper. It's a good thing we weren't depending on fish in our menu plans . .
In the middle of the night I woke up and heard something snuffling around in the brush. Armed with a flashlight and a rock I went to investigate what turned out to be a beaver working down the shoreline.
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A beautiful morning with a light mist burning off the lake. While sitting on a rock drinking our coffee, we were treated to a show by the resident pair of loons, as they chased each other up and down the length of the lake. Ashigan is about a mile long, and it was amazing how fast those loons could run/fly the length of it and back.
Ensign was very crowded. As soon as we got on the lake we started looking for a campsite. Every site we passed on our way west was taken. It seemed like there were canoes everywhere and I began to feel like I was at some state resort park. We finally found a site at the western tip of the island facing the portage to Splash Lake. From here we could see (and hear) two other sites on the island with us, as well as two sites on the south shore. We arrived early enough to have lunch and try to take a nap (the only mid-day shade was under the dining fly). While it was early, I didn't want to risk paddling on and not being able to find another site, especially since if we really pushed we could have been back at the outfitter's that day.
Our campsite was in the middle of a blueberry patch, so we picked a bunch and set them aside to add to our pancakes in the morning. The evening provided a beautiful sunset, and we were able to watch a beaver swim past our campsite.
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After a final breakfast of blueberry pancakes, we loaded up and headed for the portage to Splash Lake. The water was up and we were able to run it instead of portaging. Splash was a pretty little lake and probably would have made a better camping spot than Ensign. Such is hindsight.
At the end of the next portage we met a crew being dropped off by a water taxi. We were now back on the motorized water of Sucker Lake, and a couple of hours later, back at our outfitter on Moose Lake. We checked back in to the bunk rooms, get showers, and enjoyed another great meal in their lodge.
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Unfortunately, I was only able to get a week off of work, so this trip was way too short. But it did serve to get my wife just as hooked as I already was. It also gave me a good shakedown on my first attempt to self-outfit and self-guide trips like this. I passed that test and we were ready to start planning the next trip
One of the things we decided was that we didn't like the feeling of getting in line and racing the crowd to the next campsite. Part of the problem was that our time constraint didn't allow us to get off one of the main short loop routes, but I also felt that there would be fewer people in Quetico, so I set my sights on that for the next trip. We didn't yet feel comfortable with the idea of just the two of us taking such a trip, so we would have to find some other couples that would be up for such a trip. Next summer was out. That would be our 25th wedding anniversary and Dorothy had already served notice that, as much as she enjoyed the canoe trip, she wanted a Caribbean cruise ship experience. So we've got two years to plan the next trip and find some like-minded couples. We could think of lots of male friends, but finding an acceptable husband-wife team could be problematic.
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