My youngest and I drove the 8 hours from Chilton, WI to Rockwood Outfitters and arrived around 4. We stowed our stuff in the bunkhouse and hung out at the waterfront (me reading and my youngest swimming) while we waited for my eldest, who was coming from Minneapolis. They arrived around 5 and we got their gear stowed and headed to Poplar Haus for dinner. That was a great meal before going into BWCA. After dinner, we got our gear squared away among the 3 of us. We used backpacks for our stuff, along with 2 bear-proof barrels and a bag that we would hang. Since we were doing a loop with 17 lakes, we traveled light with a MSR Reactor 2.5 camp stove and DIY dried dinners (pasta, couscous, mashed potatoes and ramen). One comfort we brought was a 1/5 of Glenlivet 12 scotch in a metal water bottle and some good chocolate for desert—both much appreciated!

We were up a bit after 6, ate a cold bar/poptart breakfast and got our stuff down to the outfitter cabin by 7. It was foggy, but fairly warm. We loaded up and were off. I used Gaia GPS on my phone with the NatGeo Trails layer, which shows campsites. It was helpful to navigate the islands and peninsulas in Poplar to get to Lizz. Since there was a slight threat of t-storms in the afternoon, we didn’t dally around and easily made our way through Lizz, Caribou, Horseshoe to Gaskin. Our original plan was to stay on Horseshoe, which has several highly-rated sites, but site 673 and 674 were both occupied and we were feeling good so we decided to go into Gaskin, which also has some great sites. Site 628 was open and we checked it out, but reviewers had indicated 634 was “one of the best in BWCA”, so we pushed off to go check it out. We got a few 100 yards and saw canoes coming from both east and west, so decided to go back and stay at 628. We were there before lunch so got set up and hung out/swam the afternoon. We also paddled over to 634 to check it out and it was occupied—lucky we didn’t try for it! Luckily, the rain did not come during the day, although clouds were filling in from the west so we did not have a great sunset view. It was quite warm, though, but we did have a fire for ambiance. Once it got dark, a few mosquitoes did come out, but it was tolerable. There was a huge storm to the east and we could see lightning constantly for over an hour, but luckily we heard no thunder and it was not moving our direction. It was a great first day!

Overnight, a thunderstorm rolled through and there was lots of rain into the early morning. Luckily, it stopped by the time we got up around 6:15. We ate breakfast, had our coffee then loaded up and headed to Winchell. It was fairly cloudy still and luckily the light wind was from the east. We wanted to check out site 762, which is the first site east of the Omega portage. Given how many people we saw on day 1, we were surprised to find no one at any of the 8 sites between the Gaskin portage and 762—which was open. We used the huge rocks in the site to layout our tents to dry them off. Eventually the sun came out and we were able to use the short jump rock to jump into the water and swim in the cove the peninsula makes. We saw a cliff to the east of the cove, so after drying off, we bushwacked our way to check it out. We did not find any great views and the open cliff face was on the other side of a canyon made by a stream going into the cove. It was still worth the adventure to check it out. Since it was a bit cool, we started a fire in the late afternoon. It then proceeded to drizzle off and on through the evening. There was not enough rain to put the fire fully out so we were able to resuscitate it a few times before we gave up when it started to rain more continuously. We headed to bed with the patter of light rain on the tent.

Even though it had rained overnight, the tents were dry, which was great. As usual, we were up and out early. There was little wind so that made paddling easy. The portages on either side of Muskeg were tricky. Luckily, the steep hill from Kiskadinna into Muskeg was down for us—glad we weren’t going the other direction! The Muskeg-to-Long Island portage is through a bunch of floating grasses, which was cool, but then we struggled to find the portage because there is a beaver dam on top of it. Once we navigated the beaver dam, the portage was difficult due to lots of big rocks which made footing hard. Luckily, we all made it through with no sprained ankles. We checked out site 586, which was nice, but we wanted to look at site 585 on the island first. We liked 585 better and settled there. The afternoon was quite sunny, so we swam and on the north side of the island found a great rock to jump from, which was a blast. The evening was cloudless, but we didn’t see a sun set since the trees on the peninsula to the west blocked the view. We were able to stay up and see unlimited stars which was fantastic.

I was up early and was able to watch the sunrise, which was awesome. It was a beautiful morning, although a bit chilly. We were on the water fairly early and had set our sights on at least getting to Banadad. Early on there was little wind so paddling was easy. The portages were a bit longer, though, and the portage between Cave and Ross had a beaver dam in the middle of it that we had to cross. That was not easy! Once we got to Banadad, the wind was whipping up so made paddling a bit harder. We were looking for site 582 on the island right after the portage which on the map looked like was on the north side—it was not. Luckily, we found an OK landing spot east of the site with a short trail to the site. The weather radio was calling for the possibility of really nasty weather—1.5 inch hail, lots of lightning and wind gusts to 60 mph—sometime after 4 pm. We looked over our tent sites and found a large dead birch tree near one of the tents, so we moved it away from that site. We also added a few extra tie-downs to the tents to keep them down. It was windy, but mostly sunny, so we took advantage of the nice weather to do some swimming. Unfortunately, we didn’t find any good jump rocks at this site. It started to cloud up, so we ate an early dinner, took down the rain fly since we didn’t want it blowing away in the wind, then sat on the south-facing rock to watch the weather. Eventually it started drizzling so we headed to the tents for the night. Luckily no storm materialized and all it did was rain.

Since we had quite a drive ahead of us once we got out, we were up early and just ate bars for breakfast. The wind was strong, but in our favor out of the west, so we made great time paddling. The portages were another story. Rush to Little Rush showed on the south side on the NatGeo and Gaia maps, but was really on the north side, which was correctly marked on the Fisher map. It took us a bit to figure that out since there may have been on old portage on the south that was quite overgrown so we stopped to investigate that before figuring out it was on the north side. Then the Little Rush to Skipper was totally overgrown so we ended up floating/carrying the canoe on the stream between the lakes, which was a pain. Luckily, the long (1 mile) portage into Poplar was really nice and fairly flat. We made it back to Rockwood by about 11 am, changed and headed off to a nice “victory” lunch at Trail Center. It was a great trip. The wind was never an issue and rain was mostly overnight so didn’t affect us much at all. The first day was fairly busy with other people, but after that we saw very few people and hardly anyone at campsites. I’d definitely recommend this loop and Rockwood as an outfitter. Having two great dining establishments within a few miles was a big plus.