My alarm went off at 5:30 am. Sweet, the difference between Day 0 and Day 1 is a solid hour and a half. Was the sleep even worth it? We made it on the road by 7:30. Only an hour and a half later than desired which really wasn’t too bad considering. We made it all of the way to Two Harbors before we stopped which was pretty impressive considering Claire was 4 months pregnant. We grabbed a burger at Culver’s (at 10:45 in the morning?!) for a snack and headed on our way.

Claire wasn’t feeling very well (probably from the lack of sleep) and got worse as we made our way up the north shore. She soon realized it was allergies and they were bad. She had a real bad headache and felt just terrible in general. She’s a tough cookie and I knew she would keep going but the thought crossed my mind that we might not be able to head in today. Hopefully once we got out on the water the fresh air would help and not make it worse.

We arrived at Dockside Fish Market in Grand Marais around 12:30. Perfect timing for a Sunday afternoon to have the place be packed. Luckily it wasn’t very busy and we were sitting on the patio overlooking Lake Superior in no time. I really hated taking the time to eat at Dockside, especially since we were running late, but once we got our fish baskets I remembered why it is so worth it.

We were on our way up the Gunflint around 1 and had to stop at Hungry Jack Outfitters for our SPOT. It felt like the road from the Gunflint to HJO took forever but we finally made it. It also seemed like it took forever to be on our way. Dave and Nancy wanted to make sure the SPOT was working before we left. For some reason it couldn’t grab a signal but it finally did and we were out of there and on our way to Rockwood. We pulled into Rockwood around 3 pm. Mike met us and we got our canoe and quickly unloaded. The SE wind was whipping and seemed to get stronger by the minute. We sailed off for the Meeds portage almost straight into the wind.

The Meeds portage was long but we made it worse. We tried to single portage and almost made it. Scott had his GG Quetico and the canoe, and I had my GG #4 that had the full 30L food barrel inside, with the two Crazy Creek’s and two other smaller packs also carabinered to the outside. It was WAY too heavy. We made it to what felt like about half way and took a much needed break. My shirt was drenched with sweat even though it couldn’t have been more than 70 degrees out. We took another break and still hadn’t hit the Banadad Ski Trail so I knew we still had a good ? of the portage left. I decided to grab the lighter stuff and come back for the #4. Shortly after this break we passed the Banadad and soon were at Meeds. I went back for the #4 while Scott and Claire waited. We got the canoe loaded up and pushed off on Meeds. The wind was still blowing hard and we made it to the first island site. It was taken. We paddled on towards the second island site hoping it was free. The last thing we wanted was all 3 sites on Meeds to be full and have to push further. It was already going on 5 o’clock, and we were tired from the drive and lack of sleep On top of that Claire’s allergies were still bad, not to mention she had a human growing inside of her. If all sites were full, would we do the two 100 rod’ers to Pillsbery in hopes that the one site is open, with the possibilty of having to get all of the way to Henson? Or would we do the two short portages to Caribou? Mike had said a lot of sites on Caribou were open, but that would really put us off our course and make it more difficult to get to Omega the next day. If that were the case we could potentially not even make it to Omega. That would be a huge bummer.

Luckily the site was free. It was a really nice big site with two great tents pads. The only minor downfall was there wasn’t a great view of the water but it was still visible. We got the tents and hammock set up and finally relaxed. Claire took a nap in the hammock while Scott and I just putzed around camp, just happy to be there. We could hear some people out fishing and they were yelling pretty loud, but we couldn’t make out what they were saying. Probably just hollering back to their camp site.

The plan for dinner that night was pizza. The first one we did in Scott’s big saucepan. It maybe got a little too close to the flame or maybe the stove was a little high, but it was pretty burnt. It took a bit of work to get it out of the bottom of the pan. It was still pretty tasty, it just had a little more of a ‘smokey’ flavor. The second we did on the non-stick skillet with a little less heat. This one turned out awesome. You really can’t beat pizza in the wilderness. We did dishes in the dark which wasn’t very fun. We made a mental note to start making dinner before 7 so we aren’t doing dishes in the dark again. Dark was somewhere between 8-8:15. I finished my new Hydroflask growler that I filled with New Belgium Ranger with dinner. The beer was still nice and cold. What a great idea on the growler. Thanks Claire! We also had Dove chocolates for dessert...another great idea by Claire! We cleaned up camp and were in bed by 9. I finished writing by 10 and the storm hadn’t hit yet. We saw the forecast on the way up and Dave and Nancy at HJO confirmed that there was a big storm coming tonight with potential hail and damaging winds. We were safe from potential falling trees so I finally dozed off. I woke up at midnight to a lightning show but no rain really. I woke up again at 3 to a lot of wind. Our site was a little sheltered from the wind but you could hear it howling in the trees above us.

Poplar - Meeds