BWCA – Day Two

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.

BWCA trip – to be continued.