Boundary Waters Canoe Area (Northern Minnesota)

‘Juan Verde’ and I hit the boundary waters a few weeks back between my October weddings.  It was my first trip to the BWCA (most of my hiking is done on the north shore – always saying “I’ll get to the BWCA eventually…” ) and it was spectacular.  Cloudy and overcast with hints of rain or snow most of the time… but not overly cold or windy.  We kept hot water going over the fire the entire time for an emergency hot coco fix if we started to get cold.

From the ancient Indian pictographs, to John’s 8 pound walleye (released), to seeing a deer ‘jump the boarder’ by swimming across a lake… everything was better than I dreamed.  Floating through wild rice on a glass-still river the morning after seeing a scene that simultaneously included the sunset, 2 eagles lit perfect by said sunset, a huge rainbow, fall colors, a mirror-like lake, islands, and a waterfall… I couldn’t help but think to myself: “Why’d you wait so long to come up here!?!”  (and “Why didn’t you bring your nice camera!??”… 🙁  )

We had walleye for every meal other than breakfast – for 5 days.  That’s 10 meals (really, like 20 meals worth of fish … we were definitely on the ‘all fish, all the time’ diet) of pure BWCA fish.  On the way home, just for giggles, we checked the ‘mercury concentrations’ that determine what a ‘safe’ level of fish to eat is from the any particular lake; though some of the purest water around, it turns out the BWCA has high mercury concentrations  — 1 meal per month is the maximum safe amount to eat.   Haha…  On the bright side, however, I now have a keen knack for telling temperature. 🙂

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