Bachelor Party: Boundary Waters Style

Summer School ended last week so summer vacation has officially begun!  We kicked it off a little early the weekend before with a trip to the Boundary Waters for Zach's bachelor party.

After all the gear was loaded we had breakfast at the lodge before heading out.  We had six total, all high school friends plus Zach's brother, the best man.  Here are Barry, Andrew, and Zach.  Check out Andrew's...er..."awesome" hat.

Gearing up to push off.  We camped for 3 nights.  Ability ranged from essentially no canoe experience to seasoned veterans.

 From left to right: Kyle, Andrew, me, Zach, Barry, and Matt.

Paddling to our first site.  Matt was my partner the first day, and he was awesome.  He learned so much on this trip: paddle strokes, how to deal with a capsized canoe (sort of), and a bunch of knots.

I would highly recommend a canoe camping experience to anyone who enjoys the outdoors.  You carry all your gear between lakes on trails called portages which are measured in rods (a rod is one canoe length, 16 feet).  Our shortest was 12 rods and our longest was 230.  Here's Kyle doing the heavy lifting on one of our first portages.

There are a few ways you can get the canoe up on your shoulders, we did a one person lift for the most part.  These canoes were on the heavy side, they didn't trust us with the kevlar ones.

The groom portaging on day 1

 We didn't see any bears but hanging your food is still a good idea.  Zach and Matt did some brotherly bonding getting the food up onto a weak branch.

This was the big portage.  It's marked as 230 rods but with all the switchbacks it was quite a bit further.  This is the only portage we took two trips to cover and we took turns with the canoe.  Here I'm bringing it up the front side of the hill.

Day 2 was beautiful, we had lots of sun in the afternoon and found a great camp site on a lake to our selves.

We portaged back to Pine Lake to hike Johnson's Falls, a series of waterfalls that empty down into a creek.

At the top there was a beautiful calm pond that was great for swimming.  Matt and Barry saw a moose before we all got up there.

On the way back down we took turns standing under the waterfall, it was quite powerful.  With the water so high the current was pretty strong.

Bridal party minus Stuart in the run-out pool.

Day 3 was pretty rainy.  We got hit once paddling across Deer Lake and again right after setting up camp.  I was a little worried we might tip a canoe with all the wind but everyone did a great job and we made it without anyone getting dunked.

 After our last night we packed up and had an early pick-up to get back to the lodge.  We stopped in Duluth on the way home to get some hard-earned burgers at Fitger's Brewery.  Delicious.

And this past weekend Zach and Laura tied the knot!  It was such a great weekend filled with great friends and a beautiful wedding.  Congrats to Zach and Laura!

I'm now on the road again, writing from Notre Dame and heading on to Columbus OH to stay with a high school friend.  Come back soon for roller coasters, another wedding, water skiing in Northern Michigan, a concert in Chicago, and lots more shananigans.  See you all soon!