July BWCAW trip 2012

Rusty and I love the wilderness.  There's plenty of time for just sitting, thinking, and pondering some of life's big questions.

And most often, the view is really beautiful!

Looking toward the islands on Clear Lake.

The first two days of this trip were spent on Kiwishiwi River.  The mosquitoes were so awful that we wore ourselves out just dancing around.  We applied Deet many times during the day, but it simply wasn't enough.
We were both relieved when we moved on to Clear Lake and found a campsite with a nice strong breeze.  It didn't eliminate the mosquitoes (especially at night!) but it made the daylight hours very comfortable.
The most beautiful thing about Clear Lake has not been captured in a photo.  We had a mated pair of loons and their young chick frequent our end of the lake.  They were fun to watch swimming about!  The parents would dive down and catch a small fish and then swim to the baby and put the fish in its mouth!  In addition, they sang their beautiful songs during the night.  The song here is called the yodel.  It is most often heard at night.  It warns other loons that "This is MY lake!"

 If you can't get this to play for you, try this website:  http://www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/loon/Dictionary.html

Rusty does most of the sawing and chopping.

Our fire pit on the Kawishiwi River campsite.

All camping is restricted to official sites with a fire pit like the one in the picture above.  They generally have "sit logs" and always have a grate.  Good sites have rocks around the grate to deflect wind.  We were good citizens and left a nice pile of freshly cut dry wood for the next campers.

I feel that the most dangerous part of our trips is the portages.  Many people will paddle a much longer route in order to avoid a portage.  Neither Rusty nor I mind them; in fact, I usually enjoy the change from paddling to portaging.  However, the footing, as I will show here, is the dangerous part.  Keep in mind, we are each are carrying 40-50 pounds in packs or canoe while we are picking our way across these portages.

This is a very good portage trail.  Not too much difficulty here.

Grassy portages are usually near water (mosquitoes!) and often have hidden rocks.

Rocks are an invitation for a twisted ankle or slippery fall.

Some rocks are much harder to traverse, especially with a heavy pack.

Exposed tree roots on the portage can be just as tricky as the rocks.

And sometimes the rocks and roots come together.  You can see a slight hill in this pic.  Hills are very common on a portage.

If there has been recent rain, the portage can be pretty muddy.  It's easy to lose a shoe in this stuff.

I wore my head-net on most of the portages this year; the mosquitoes were very hungry.

Doughnut tree.

Rusty found a tree whose trunk grew in a complete 360º and then continued up and branched out into a fairly normal looking tree.  How odd!

Rusty caught a beautiful Norther Pike on Clear Lake.

There was so much fish that the two of us couldn't eat it all!

The fly on the tent is raised in both the front and the back in hopes of getting some air in there.  90+ temps.

Washing clothes in the lake.

Temps in the low 90's doesn't sound like much since we've been having triple-digit temps for the last 10 days in NE.  However, for the Boundary Waters, anything over the low 80's is quite unusual.  We went swimming in the lake and the water was very comfortable.

Nature offered nice places to dry clothes, especially on balsam trees!

Snooze time.  More peace and quiet.

It was another wonderful trip, except for the last 50 miles.  While in Fremont, NE, we were in a minor car accident.  Neither of us were seriously injured and the canoe was unharmed, but the van didn't fare as well.

Now it's a Snub Nose.

It's been an incredibly busy week with ER, doctor visits, insurance agents, car searches, credit unions, filling out forms, etc. etc.
All is well that ends well.  We are feeling better and we've found a new(er) van to replace the old one.  YEA!!!

Construction Update

The widening of 14th Street behind our house is a 2 mile project with a round-about at either end, a bridge over the interstate, a four-lane divided road, a bike trail, and buried electric lines and buried drainage pipe.  Total cost of the project is around 5 million. 

The project was started in September of 2011.  Each month that goes by we have less and less access to our home.  Right now if we want to go south towards downtown, we have to go east, then north, then west, then north, then west, then south then west, and then finally turn south towards town.  We, and all of our friends, delivery people, service people, etc. are looking forward to the end of the project.

Interstate bridge with bike trail on both sides.

I posted pictures many months ago of this bridge.  It appears to be completed, but the roads leading up to it are not quite finished.  It's opening was originally scheduled for September of 2012.

View from the bridge and looking south towards  town.

The picture above shows some new pavement.  Near the top of the picture is the southern-most boundary of the project.  At that intersection they are building a huge, two-lane round-about with tunnels underneath for the bike trails.

Looking west on Fletcher.

Fletcher is the first road south of our house that gets us out of our neighborhood.  It is located on the north end of the interstate bridge.  It still needs more dirt and new cement before it is ready to open.

Cement pouring near our back yard.

The night before we left for the Boundary Waters July trip, the workers poured cement with night lights, beginning about 2 a.m.  I snapped this picture around 8 a.m. as we were preparing to leave.