On our third day we paddled out of the BWCA and back to the Falls Lake boat landing where our cars were parked.
We woke up to cloudy skies, and a few mosquitoes. Before this morning we had no issues with mosquitoes or the nasty black flies, and we didn’t need to use our netting or bug spray. After a delicious breakfast of oatmeal with red quinoa, we packed our gear and “left no trace” and paddled away. The wind was picking up.
We paddled through the first lake with a slight wind. We paddled through the second lake with more wind but no rain. We paddled through the third lake in the wind and rain…so it made my adventure complete…I experienced the BWCA in the beautiful sunshine and in a dismal rain. Both were beautiful but I was thankful the rain came on our last day – on our way out.
My time in the BWCA was a great adventure and it was so good to experience the great wilderness of Northern Minnesota in this way. I am grateful.
After breakfast on the second day of our BWCA trip two of us from our group went out paddling for several hours. It was another beautiful, sunny day. We paddled up a peninsula and around the bend, stopped for lunch and paddled back down on a different lake. I became a great navigator with the map. We planned to portage back into the lake where we were staying through a portage that we had been told was very short (lesson learned – look for yourself how long the portage is…it tells on the maps.)
The portage ended up being very narrow, rocky, hilly, muddy, full of roots, dangerous and four times longer than we thought it would be. It was the worse portage my paddling partner had ever crossed with his experience in the BWCA.
Still thinking the portage was only 15 rods we kept hauling the canoe forward, but it was very difficult. Neither of us could not carry it on our shoulders and we could only carry it so far without stopping to rest. After struggling and thinking we were close to the end of the portage we met a young man coming towards us, checking out the portage from the other direction. We asked if we were almost to the end and he said about half way! O my…so we picked up the canoe again and started walking. Then the young man turned around and asked if we wanted help, so he carried the front of the canoe and we carried the back. We were very grateful for our “Portage Angel.” When we finally made it to the other side his young son was waiting with their canoe. I told him his dad was very kind and helped us very much. He seemed pleased and proud of his dad.
We settled into the canoe and took off again, paddling back to our Island, ready to be back at camp, relax and make dinner.
It was another one of those traveling adventures where one seems to get in a situation not knowing how you will get out of the situation and being relieved when you finally get back to “your place” – with prayers of thanksgiving – and all is right with the world again.
We did not have any night visitors the second evening. We slept well.
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) is a destination for many outdoor enthusiasts. I love nature and being outdoors so I consider myself an enthusiast but I had never experienced a trip in the BWCA. It is something I have often thought of doing so I made a commitment to go on the annual Faribault Flyers BWCA trip this year.
A foggy morning! Valerie & Gary’s first BWCA adventure.
Ten of us met up in Ely. We had dinner together and made everything ready for our departure the next morning. After a good night’s sleep we woke up early, went out for breakfast, and then took off to the Falls Lake boat landing to load our canoes and start our adventure. It was very foggy.
We loaded our gear into five canoes and the fog started to lift, thankfully. We took off paddling to the first portage. Our group split up; six guys took off for five days and the other group of four, the one I was in, took off for three days. By this time the sun was shining in a blue, cloudless sky and it was a glorious day to be in the wilderness!
View from “Valerie’s Island.”
We paddled across a second lake and portaged again to the third lake where we found our campsite. Since this was my first time in the Boundary Waters, and the others had been there before, they let me choose the campsite. I wanted to be on an island. We found a campsite on the west end of a small island with a slight, rocky incline. It was perfect. There is a fire pit with an iron grate, and a latrine at each official campsite in the BWCA. (The latrines are several yards back from the fire pit and are numbered for emergency location identification.)
Our canoes down from our campsite.
We noticed this island on the map but it didn’t have a name. There was a larger island nearby named Gary’s Island so we named our island “Valerie’s Island.”
After setting up camp we had lots of time to sit and relax, read, gather firewood, make dinner, enjoy a beautiful sunset, and go to bed early.
We crawled into our tents and fell asleep but in the middle of the night we were awakened by voices…it was very disorienting at first, and then kind of scary, and then we learned it was a medical emergency. The campers across the lake, to the south of us, had paddled by the island earlier in the day so they knew there was someone occupying the campsite on the island. One of the two men was having an asthma attack and forgot his inhaler back in his truck. His friend loaded him into the canoe, paddled out into the dark night and dark waters to our island and used the sounds of snoring to find our site. I don’t remember the words exactly but in essence he said “We need help. Do you have an inhaler?” His talking woke us up and he repeated what he said and added “I’m just a social worker and I don’t know what to do.” After regaining our wits, a woman in our group, who is a nurse, got up and went out to talk with them. She suggested a breathing technique since we didn’t have an inhaler. The “patient” was talking and she said that was a good sign. The two men paddled back into the dark waters, to their campsite. They said they would return in the morning with a report. All this time the “token male” in our group slept through it all!
It wonderful to see the starry, starry sky but, of course, it was very hard to get back to sleep after all the excitement.
The next morning the two guys did come back. We recognized both of them, and their dog. We had seen them at the boat launch the day we left Falls Lake boat launch. They let us know the patient was doing OK. Being away from the smoke of the fire, propping himself up against a tree for the night, and special breathing made it easier for him to breath. We were thankful!
When we decided to celebrate the solar eclipse with a party around a bonfire I never thought we’d actually see the eclipse. The long- range forecast was cloudy, but we were going to celebrate the event anyways. Although we woke up Monday morning to rain, by 9 a.m. there was sunshine with a few clouds and we had some good viewing on top of a hill where our friend’s live.
We gathered together, sitting in the shade a little ways from the bonfire… the temperature was very warm outside and being by the fire made it warmer still, until the moon started covering the sun and then it cooled down. Hot dogs were available to roast, delicious salads ready to eat along with star-shaped cheese slices with crackers, the party-bag goodies, and an all-American apple pie.
Star and moon shaped cheese cut-outs.
A couple of solar eclipse boxes were made and to my delight a welder’s helmet was available to view the eclipse and it worked well. We took turns watching the different phases of the eclipse using the helmet. The eclipse peaked at 1:06 pm where we live in the universe, and at peaked at 85%. I did not take any photos of it.
We listened to old songs to: Moon Shadow, Sunshine On My Shoulders, Here Comes The Sun, You Are My Sunshine, Age of Aquarius, I Love The Flower Girl, It’s A Small Town Saturday Night… and about 1:06 p.m. we heard a little howling coming from somewhere near-by…
At about 1:08 p.m. the sun/moon was clouded over for the rest of the afternoon and we saw no more of the eclipse. We had a great time while it lasted.
I have remembered this quote, and repeated it often, since I read it on a sign in a national park out west years ago. (It may be a Henry Thoreau but I could not confirm that.)
I am in favor of silence and quiet. My favorite time of day is early morning; sitting in my chair, in silence, drinking coffee, thinking, praying, reading, getting energized for the day.
There can be silence when standing in awe of beauty. There is the companionable silence of friends together not always conversing. There is precious silence while holding a sleeping baby in your arms.
Pfeiffer Lake, near Ely, MN The lake was like glass each morning.
We spent a couple of days camping up north near Ely, MN and then a couple more days on the north shore, near Tofte, MN. Since we were tent camping we did not have electricity to charge our phones…we could only charge them when we were in the car driving somewhere. Here are a few snippets from when I had my phone charged, and when I had my phone with me, and when the photos turned out; three big stipulations! Although it looks cloudy in several photos, we did have nice weather most of the time.
Wild rice growing in Rice Lake, near Ely, MN.A gull flying over Lake Superior.A rocky beach on Lake Superior. The big lake was calm and was also like glass this day.Inviting Adirondack chairs at Naniboujou Lodge.Off the pier at Grand Marais a schooner, the Hjordis, sails from the North House Folk School. A couple of years ago we went for a ride on this sailboat.
According to Wikipedia a cairn is: “a human-made pile of stones. The word cairn comes from the Scottish Gaelic: càrn. Cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes, from prehistoric times to the present.”
One can see many cairns on the north shore of Lake Superior. We spent a few nights camping up near Tofte, MN and went hiking in near-by state parks and along the rocky shore. Wherever there were rocks there were cairns. A local woman told me Native Americans used to build cairns as trail markers.
We made our own cairn near the waters edge where we placed our camp chairs to sit and listen to the waves and read our books for an afternoon. We were able to balance eight small stones.
My cairn
Another day I witnessed a little boy, about 2 years old, walking along, happily knocking over a cairn as he passed by. It’s a good thing we are not relying on cairns for navigation these days.
I went to a laundromat yesterday. We are getting ready for a camping trip and I had a large load I wanted to wash so I decided to do one load in a big machine.
Off I went to drop off the load. On the way I was thinking how thankful I am for my own washer and dry at home. I remembered the very first washer and dryer we purchased back in the late 70’s and the feeling of such luxury; to be able to do laundry in my own home. I am grateful to this day for that convenience, and even more so after visiting the laundromat.
After placing the laundry in the machine and figuring out how much it would cost, I discovered I didn’t have enough change. I needed 50 cents more. I checked the change in the glove compartment of our car but it had been depleted recently. I tried the change machine in the laundromat and, of course, it didn’t work. I noticed washing machines take credit cards now so I tried my VISA but that didn’t work either…at this point I was frustrated…knowing it was my own fault for not bringing enough change. I was on my way to an appointment and didn’t have time to go get change elsewhere before the appointment.
There was a woman sitting on the other side of the room so I asked if she had change for a dollar. She said no, but she said she would give me two quarters. So I gathered all my dimes and nickels and pennies, which totaled 43 cents, and gave them to her in exchange. I thanked her profusely.
I started the washing machine and headed to my appointment, planning to return afterward to pick up my clean laundry and bring it home to dry in my own dryer.
After I drove away a thought suddenly came to me: why didn’t I give the woman my dollar for her two quarters? That would have been the better way. I was so focused on getting the correct change for the machine that I didn’t think beyond that problem. Of course she was gone when I returned to collect my laundry.
May God bless that kind woman in the laundromat; and may I remember the lesson learned.
Blue Jean Sunday is the nick-name of an outreach event that happened at Emmaus Church, last Sunday, a very different Sunday morning for us all. We came prepared to participate in one of several groups: a prayer walk around the neighborhood, a clean-up crew for a near-by stream, a landscape crew at an elementary school, assistants for the senior center church service, a group to visit to the assisted living home residents across the street, a group to hand out fliers inviting neighbors to the free community meal at our church coming up soon (and monthly during the school year) or a group to stay back to prepare a luncheon so the congregants could return to reconnect and visit about their experiences.
After a brief service of communion and prayer each group went their way. I went to the assisted living home. The residents seemed hesitant to come and meet our group of eleven in the recreation room so we went and knocked on doors inviting them for donuts and coffee. That worked. Both men and women started coming out of their rooms, walking to the rec room and began opening up. When we left we had probably interacted with 15-20 residents.
These images come to mind when reflecting on my time at the home: Jerome playing Dominoes with a resident and then praying together after a couple of games, a high-schooler from our church (unable to connect with a resident from the home) connected with an elderly woman from our congregation who was a part of our group, three residents sitting in a row enjoying the donuts we brought along to share, the resident dog eating all the crumbs that fell from the donuts, a couple from church offering residents to pet their small dog they brought along, all this going on around me as myself and others were carrying on conversations with residents that were hanging around. There was a lot of commotion in that small recreation room, but somewhere along the way it all translated into joy.
The feedback at lunch from other’s experiences seemed positive too. I believe ideas are percolating in our pastor’s mind and we will be having more Blue Jean Sundays.
My husband is an active member of the Faribo Flyer’s bike club. They ride their bicycles all over southeastern Minnesota, usually on Saturday mornings and Wednesday evenings. Sometimes I join the trail riders on Wednesday nights. After the Wednesday night rides both the road riders and trail riders meet up for snacks and fellowship.
Sour Cream Raisin with meringue.Old-Fashioned peach pie
Once a year Vicki hosts the groups and spends the day making homemade pies, usually four to six pies.
Raspberry and blueberry cream pie with lemon zest.
On this particular evening I did not pedal nearly far enough to burn off the number of calories I consumed after tasting so many treats from the delicious array of homemade goodies available that evening.
Nanaimo pie…a Canadian treat…think Almond Joy.
Vicki’s four homemade pies, another homemade blueberry pie (made by Tim), Mary’s weekly deviled-eggs contribution, and homemade Sun-dried tomato/pesto bread and cheese made for a delicious feast!
Blueberry pie.Mary’s deviled eggs, the sun-dried tomato and pesto bread, and cheese.
It’s a good thing this pie-making event happens only once a year!
After breakfast on the second day of our BWCA trip two of us from our group went out paddling for several hours. It was another beautiful, sunny day. We paddled up a peninsula and around the bend, stopped for lunch and paddled back down on a different lake. I became a great navigator with the map. We planned to portage back into the lake where we were staying through a portage that we had been told was very short (lesson learned – look for yourself how long the portage is…it tells on the maps.)
What do you bring to a solar eclipse party?
I went to a laundromat yesterday. We are getting ready for a camping trip and I had a large load I wanted to wash so I decided to do one load in a big machine.
