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Date/Time: 03/28/2024 12:02PM
Worst thing you have ever forgotten

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Previous Messages:
Author Message Text
analyzer 05/10/2020 01:00PM
CCBBSpeckled: "
We then flagged down another guy, who allowed us to hop in the back of his pickup with his stinky wet dog and he gave us a ride the rest of the way. "



ride in the back with the dog
OgimaaBines 05/08/2020 11:36PM
Lets see... Two trips I relied on other's water filters. Once a gravity filter clogged and trip mates got the green apple splatters and a porcelain filter clogged resulting in some very arduous and time intensive rehydrating. I also forgot my filter on a solo trip but collecting in the middle of large lakes proved easy enough.


I forgot to bring my tackle box, a camera, and a large cook pot all on different trips. I figured these out before putting in but had to pay some hefty prices out of Ely.


Worst was probably when I forgot to screw the cap on my first celebratory slug of whisky and lost 3/4 of my trip supply the first night. Almost drank it out of the bottom of the canoe!
bombinbrian 05/08/2020 04:45PM
Cooking oil.... needless to say, first thing on my checklist now.
Banksiana 05/05/2020 08:28PM
Frenchy19: "Maps for a Hunter's Island trek. Spent nearly as much on a new set as I did on the permit."


This is why I opt for just the Chrismar.

Well that and accuracy.
Frenchy19 05/05/2020 07:36PM
Maps for a Hunter's Island trek. Spent nearly as much on a new set as I did on the permit.
salukiguy 05/05/2020 02:27PM
On a 3 man 7 day trip I was the only one who brought toilet paper and I only brought about a tenth of a roll. I had to ration what I had so it would last to the end. We barely made it.
Yakfish 05/05/2020 08:18AM
I had packed, repacked and repacked all my gear for my first week long solo. My plan was to get a few hours of sleep and leave home in souther Wisconsin about 0100 hrs. I packed the car and my wife said she had some running to do so she would top off the gas tank. I got up as planned and drove 390 miles to Two harbors for my last gas up. With no wallet or ID. No cash. No Gas. A simple couple phone calls to my wife and the outfitters had me back on track. I got all checked out at Sawbill loaded up. I drove over to Kawishiwi still amazed at how I could forget my wallet. And realized I didn’t get a fishing permit. Yup. The next 6 days were glorious.
bwcadan 04/22/2020 08:41PM
Tooth paste, brushes and floss. "Brushed" and flossed with boiled pine needles.


A few food items and the 1st evening meat for dinner.
MN_Lindsey 04/22/2020 05:41PM
Sounds super trivial, but I forgot our mesh ditty bag on our last trip and really regretted it! We wash the dishes, and put all the clean ones in the ditty bag to air dry, and we totally forgot it last year, so we had no place to hang our dishes to dry like I like.
Captn Tony 04/11/2020 07:11AM
Wables: "I once forgot toothpicks. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but problematic when you are about to make bacon wrapped walleyes. We had to carve 40 of the little buggers. "


Fricken Hilarious!!
lundojam 04/11/2020 05:52AM
This one says something about my former lifestyle. We stayed at a motel in Grand Marais the night before, got up real early, ate breakfast, and realized I hadn't been wearing shoes and didn't bring any. Had to wait a couple hours for Joyne's to open. Lots of new-cheap-sneaker blisters on that trip.
cowdoc 04/09/2020 06:42PM
I usually take a small walkie talkie that has NOAA weather. I'm not fanatic about listening to it much, but it is nice to turn on after supper to see what the night might bring or to see what winds will be for next days travel. Forgot it one year. Had the 10 day forecast printed off before trip in food pack.....but things change. This was July, 2014......the night the vicious storm hit. Luckily we were on Gaskin (still bad), but it wasn't like what happened in the LLC area. I usually batten down the hatches pretty good each night, so we didn't lose anything. But, it would have been better to have known that kind of storm was going to club us that night.
andym 04/08/2020 12:49PM
Wables: "I once forgot toothpicks. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but problematic when you are about to make bacon wrapped walleyes. We had to carve 40 of the little buggers. "
I spent some time reading some of these to my wife last night. She got a good laugh out of this one. For so many of these we lose having something on our trip but get a story to tell and remember for the rest of our lives.
Wables 04/07/2020 07:47PM
I once forgot toothpicks. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but problematic when you are about to make bacon wrapped walleyes. We had to carve 40 of the little buggers.
RT 04/07/2020 11:55AM
I too forgot cooking oil one year. And filet knife... oops. Made the best of that situation by making "fish on a stick". Gut the fish and roast them like marshmallows. Turned out great actually. LOL
mutz 04/06/2020 12:24PM
We have left things home on early trips that we had to pick up in Ely including a tent and some fishing rods (very profitable days for a couple of Ely businesses), but never got to camp missing anything really important. We now have lists for everything, list one when it goes on the packing bench(kitchen table), list two when it goes into a pack, list three when it goes into the truck, list four it comes out of the truck, list five it goes in the canoe. Every pack, paddle or item removed from canoe at portages has a piece of fluorescent orange tape so hard to leave behind.
woodsandwater 04/06/2020 11:22AM
Stove...we forgot our stove... with our group of six. It rained a bit but we were able to make a fire. Forgot our two food packs once, but fortunately we weren't too far away so could return to get them!
trailcherry 04/06/2020 08:53AM
I left my maps and case at home once, realized exactly where I had left them just as we were pulling into the ranger station in Grand Marais. Not a huge problem, we just made an extra stop and picked up some new maps.


Our entry point was # 47, Lizz and Swamp lakes, we put in at Rockwood Outfitter's on Poplar lake. It was a gray day with a bit of a mist coming down, we picked a point across the lake and headed for it. After getting past the first group of islands we had to stop and try to regain our bearings, things change as you're traveling along and the weather was making it hard to navigate. The map case I left at home has a small, cheap, $2.00 ball compass attached to it, I realized then how much I value that small piece of equipment. Again this was not a huge problem other than having to dig into our pack while out on the water to grab our other compass.


Keeping my fingers crossed for a May, 20th entry!
andym 04/05/2020 10:53PM
DKalis: "The bottle of brandy I picked up in GM just before driving to the entry point got left in the pickup. "


Bummer. And you really don't want to slug that down when you get back to the EP at the end of the trip.
DKalis 04/05/2020 09:19PM
The bottle of brandy I picked up in GM just before driving to the entry point got left in the pickup.
BearMandolin 04/05/2020 10:03AM
Here are a few from 40 years of trips:


On an early trip in our 20s I forgot to grind the 4 pounds of coffee. It was a two week trip for four of us. We ground it with rocks and the coffee had a very earthy taste.


On a trip up the Man Chain with my son I learned the first day that my gortex coat had been washed enough times to no longer be water repellent. Quite the opposite. I used a trash bag as rain gear (not recommended) on what was, of course, a very rainy trip.


We got pinned down by very heavy thunderstorms once at the end of the Nym-Batchewaung portage. One inch hail and everything. We finally got off the portage and set up at at a site down Batchewaung, and Hugh couldn't find his camera bag. On the way back to the portage he passed another canoe and asked if they had seen a camera bag? What kind of camera, they asked. I t was a very nice SLR with multiple lenses and after IDing it Hugh got it back.


Maybe the worst was leaving the spare white gas on an island on Conmee during a fire ban. We made it all the way to Sarah and set up camp before we realized it. A long way back!
Savage Voyageur 04/05/2020 09:56AM
That would be the 6 Ribeyes, sausage sticks, cheese blocks, butter. Yes my part was to bring the refrigerator food. We were three lakes away from the entry point on Lake Three, and I remembered that the food was back In my refrigerator. I stopped paddling and just hung my head low. I learned to pack for trips with lists.
Michwall2 04/04/2020 11:35PM
Bearpath9: "Cribbage board. And the deck of cards. "


That would be a disaster! We play every evening while the mosquitos attack the tent.
andym 04/04/2020 07:09PM
Couldn't burn it? But white gas is an awesome fire starter. Although so good that you need to be careful about weather conditions when a fire could get out of control. But we did do this once, on the last night of a trip, to get a camp fire going in the rain. I'm sure we could have done without it but it fun and we had extra fuel.
canoe212 04/04/2020 01:42PM
Last year (August 2019) I realized at 4:30 in the morning, standing on Sawbill"s dock that I had forgotten my fuel (white gas) for my dragonfly stove. I was disappointed but waited the 3 hours until Sawbill's store would open so I could buy white gas and a bottle to put it in. After my convenience fee and moron tax had been paid I happily set out to do my Lady Chain to Little Sag loop. Ready to make dinner on Pheobe I pulled out my stove, and fuel. Once beginning to assemble them, I realized I didn't have the pump for my stove. Dragonfly stoves have the pump separate from the burner. I had left my pump and hose in the fuel bottle on my shelves in my storage closet. I spent 3 hours and way too much money, just so I could carry fuel (but not burn fuel) in the BWCA. While I was able to have fires most mornings and evenings, sometimes this wasn't possible due to current weather conditions. Cold coffee and oatmeal in the morning was quite disappointing. Cold potatoes in the evening, however, was also worse than expected.
UPBoy 04/03/2020 03:21PM
Hardy a trip goes by that we (I) don't forget something. It's part of the fun sometimes. Some of the bigger blunders include leaving the water filter at home but folks have been drinking out of those lakes for years and I'm not dead yet. I have forgotten the frozen food a time or two but that's why God made Zup's. I now post Post-it notes all over the place so I will not forget things like food and bait.


Once I had to backtrack 20 miles for my fishing pole. I will never do that again!
mschi772 04/02/2020 09:32AM
I was just a WI state park outing (like 5 hrs from home) and not the BWCA, but I forgot the tent once. No other oversight has ever made me feel as stupid. Went and picked-up a 4-person Ozark Trail tent from a Walmart like 30 min away for like $50. I gotta say...It's bulky but not as bulky as I thought it might be, heavy, but not as heavy as I thought it would be, probably won't stand the test of time, but it did the job and wasn't awful (we even had some fairly substantial rain one night). And it his this little enclosed "gear closet" with little zippered doors accessing it from inside the tent and from outside the tent, and that feature entertained me more than it had any right to.
boonie 04/02/2020 09:08AM
On several subsequent trips after the first one, I forgot to leave home half the food I took last time.
Bearpath9 04/02/2020 07:03AM
Cribbage board. And the deck of cards.
AluminumBarge 04/01/2020 07:41PM
Took a week long trip up the Falls chain to Kawnipi in early June. It was hot and made it up to Wet Lake on day one. Went to go fishing after dinner and realized we forgot a couple pounds of leeches In the plastic bag somewhere (back when you could take live bait). One person admitted he left it under a tree on the Silver Falls portage. Was trying to keep them in the shade and forgot. Didn’t really matter as we caught plenty of fish. At the end of the trip we go to our two cars and one guy comes running back to the lake. The leeches WEREN’T left at the Silver Falls portage. Yep, in his car...all week...a hot week. Thank god I drove my own car. He and his partner had to drive back to St. Paul in that car and the smell wasn’t any better with the windows down.
andym 04/01/2020 07:33PM
sns:
"Where's Kevin?" Was asked about 30 minutes after a rest stop near Tomah.
"



One of our friends, who grew up on a farm near Cloquet, was forgotten on the side of the road by his father on the one vacation they took while he was growing up. It was just the Dad and the two boys. They stopped to take a pee by the side of the road. His father got back in the drivers seat and heard the door close behind him and drove off. But it was just his brother. Wasn't until about an hour later when his Dad asked our friend a question and his brother said, "Dad, are you talking too Randy? He's not here anymore." There is a problem with Finns not talking much.


Our friend does not have fond memories of his first vacation.
fishonfishoff 04/01/2020 10:21AM
Our leeches in a leech keeper, tied to a dock at Seagull Outfitters. They were still there a week later but very unusable!
shock 03/31/2020 08:13PM
Eyedocron: "Shock, we may have found your rod case on the little short portage between Slate and Saganagons at the north end of the Man chain in 1997. Question was - What to do? We finally left it there in plain sight thinking someone might come back looking for it.

The other option was to take it along, but we had 10 days yet to go all the way to Tanner and back to Prairie Portage.

What would others have done? There was a name label on it for someone in Wisconsin."

I should have added we did paddle back to get it (portage between Seagull and Rog), and got to our destination (Knife Lake) as the sun was setting .

Yes, I think the best thing to do is to leave it in plain sight hoping the owner will return to get their item.
sns 03/31/2020 02:58PM
When young and stupid(er) we were traveling as a larger group (aged 18 to late 20's) from SE WI, headed to MN...in a rented RV. Pre cell-phone days.


"Where's Kevin?" Was asked about 30 minutes after a rest stop near Tomah.


Poor kid (18 years old) got out to take a whiz at a gas station, not knowing it was just a driver change.


When we got back to him 1.5 hours later (construction on 94), he was sitting on the curb talking to two state troopers, with nothing at all but cutoff jeans (and hopefully underwear). No wallet, shirt, shoes, anything...


So we did eventually remember him.


Man was he _super_ pissed. Ran at us with both middle fingers up and cursed us all out to shame a drunken sailor in front of the troopers. The troopers and all of us were laughing, which did nothing to help his mood.


Forgiveness took some time for Kevin.
Eyedocron 03/31/2020 02:51PM
Long ago, while in college, 2 friends and I, veterans of Scout trips, entered at Moose Lake and spent the first night in the southern end of Agnes. The next day we paddled the whole length of Agnes and at the end of the first portage out the north end, discovered the tent in a duffel never got loaded that morning. It was a long way back down Agnes and the tent was sitting waiting for us.
Eyedocron 03/31/2020 02:44PM
Shock, we may have found your rod case on the little short portage between Slate and Saganagons at the north end of the Man chain in 1997. Question was - What to do? We finally left it there in plain sight thinking someone might come back looking for it.

The other option was to take it along, but we had 10 days yet to go all the way to Tanner and back to Prairie Portage.

What would others have done? There was a name label on it for someone in Wisconsin.
MikeinMpls 03/31/2020 08:24AM
Camping with my dad and my cousins in the mid-80s. I owned two Timberline 4-man tents. Brought them both. For some unknown reason, one of the tents was missing a junction bar for the poles. Just one. If you've ever owned or used a Eureka Timberline, you know that a missing junction bar can be a small big-deal. My cousins had engineering knowledge and rigged something up.


Mike
carmike 03/31/2020 07:54AM
All on separate trips, I've forgotten my clothes, my food, and my sleeping bag.


I'd like to think I'm not that consistently dumb in day-to-day life, but I probably am, to be honest. We can't all be rocket surgeons.


Jackfish 03/30/2020 07:59PM
Technically, this wasn't a forgotten item, but I wish that was the case. Got to the put-in spot with my sunglasses up on my hat and they fell off. I turned around to see where they went... and promptly stepped on them. Broken. No sunglasses for the trip.
nakor 03/30/2020 07:46PM
Flashlight. Twice...
GopherAdventure 03/30/2020 07:27PM
I forgot the Foldable landing net in the truck. It was a blessing in disguise because I was able to land them all by hand and now I only bring a fish grabber. Now I have no landing net getting snagged on everything.


Tony
GopherAdventure 03/30/2020 07:27PM
I forgot the Foldable landing net in the truck. It was a blessing in disguise because I was able to land them all by hand and now I only bring a fish grabber. Now I have no landing net getting snagged on everything.


Tony
gopher2307 03/30/2020 07:01PM
Water bottles...ya....we had to drive back into town. At least we hadn't actually pushed off, but did have everything up to the launch.
djwillco 03/30/2020 05:44PM
We were in Voyageurs and I had brought a backpack kayak in order to hike into a remote lake that has no pressure and is full of fish. In the past we've hiked in and killed it fishing from shore. So, we talked about if for months and how we were going to have the time of our lives fishing that lake now that we'd have a watercraft to access areas unreachable by shorline.


I forgot the paddle...


shock 03/30/2020 05:34PM
forgot my rod case on a portage once , it was beige in color and stood it up next to a group of birch trees , bad mistake , noticed it missing 2 lakes later. after that i put a bunch of colorful stickers all over the case.
schweady 03/30/2020 05:26PM
Daughter and SIL forgot their tent.


Fortunately, noticed it while bunking at VNO the night before. Alps 2-man rental to the rescue.
Banksiana 03/30/2020 04:53PM
Salt (and the fishing was great- the fish not so much)
TP.
x2jmorris 03/30/2020 04:10PM
Bought decaf coffee on accident one trip that was not the greatest. Other than that I don't think I have ever really forgot something.. at least nothing comes to mind.
Michwall2 03/30/2020 03:44PM
I forgot to check that my water filter was operational before we left home or the entry point. Got to the end of a very, very long portage the first day and discovered that the filter was missing a part. No amount of McGiver-ing would fix it. We had planned a river trip and I did not have a back up. It was forecast for a very hot week. We ended up base camping on a lake for the week so that we could have water. Did a couple day trips. And enjoyed the heck out of the solitude.
Derrski 03/30/2020 02:59PM
I forgot fishing poles once, left them in the car at the EP. We had the reels. It actually turned into a great story.


On the first night, we discovered the camera tripod had a broken leg. So we McGyvered the reel onto the pole and used zip ties for line eyes.


We actually caught fish longer than our pole!! Yes, some big pike were had with what we call the monopod pole. Plenty of other fish too. 15 years later, that "forgotten item" is our fondest memory of the trip.,
TominMpls 03/30/2020 01:48PM
I forgot our only tent on a family camping trip up north once. After that I starting using a checklist on every trip.
AdamXChicago 03/30/2020 01:47PM
Paddles.
Don't ask...
merlyn 03/30/2020 01:42PM
On a trip around 1970 we got a tow to Northern light lake across the portage from Sag. Our homemade canvas and resin canoe and the outfitters rented canoe. Next morning as we packed up we heard " Dad, there aren't any paddles! " Bad outfitter!! Good thing we had our paddles for our canoe.
On a bwca trip in July we left the travel lunch on the dining room table back in ILL. for a week, air turned off, windows closed, house locked. Did I say July? hot, hot, humid hot July. It took the house burning down to finely get rid of the smell.
CCBBSpeckled 03/30/2020 01:35PM
We've had a couple good ones! My favorite was on a trip to Lac La Croix. We entered Moose River North and took the day to paddle north. We found a great camp on an island NW of Tiger Bay. We hit camp early afternoon and after the long day immediately broke into the Whiskey. (Normally we get camp set up first and chores done first).


After too many shots and getting fir going, it occured we hadn't set up tents yet, so we all grab our bags and gear which were still down by the shore and wander off into the woods to find adequate tent pads. Everyone brings their own solo tent. In tent flatulance and snoring brought us to this years ago. So I wander back, find a tent pad, set everything up and wander back to the fire...more whiskey is consumed as others find their way back as well. A little more time passes and we realize...we haven't seen Aaron in quite awhile...in fact we haven't seen him since we all went to set up tents.


We head back down the trail looking for Aaron, we find him sitting next to his tent drunk, just staring at it. His tent was nicely laid out, staked in place, ground cloth under it and completely flat on the ground. After a few moments of drunk staring and drunk comperhension, someone pipes up - "Where's the poles?" To which Aaron replies "I don't know?" We look towards his pack which is completely emptied out at this point and no poles. Laughter ensues and eventually we found enough rope to string it up as best we could between some trees.


Here's another favorite. A quick day trip down the Cloquet River, we put in at Indian Lake and were paddling down to Bear Lake. We had dropped my buddies car off at Bear Lake and proceeded to Indian Lake. It was end of May and the morning had a chill to it. We launched and had an absolutely beautiful paddle down the river to Bear lake, upon exiting the river at Bear Lake...my buddy looks at me with a bit of a panic and states...My keys are in my jacket that I took off and left in your truck up at Indian. Ahhh Dang! At this point it's late enough in the day, that it's going to get dark by the time we'd walk back. That would've taken hours. So we started running. After the first couple miles we came managed to flag down an old logger out in the woods. We told him our situation, he started laughing and left. So we started running again. We then flagged down another guy, who allowed us to hop in the back of his pickup with his stinky wet dog and he gave us a ride the rest of the way.
andym 03/30/2020 01:22PM
I feel like this has somehow been the answer to a few threads lately but the worst things that were forgotten on a trip were our nephews rain fly (should have asked to see their whole tent when the stuff sack seemed light, fortunately I had brought a spare tyvek ground cloth in case it was needed and it served the purpose) and their Dad offered to buy the bug repellent and then left it in the car.


So far we are too careful to have forgotten anything that comes to mind. What we always fear forgetting is the stuff in the fridge and freezer.
NebraskaDano 03/30/2020 01:05PM
I am just curious as to what things, after you had gotten out into the BWCA, you realized you didn't bring. Our trips are unique in that we don't pack a lot for food for dinner except Shore Lunch and rely on fish for dinner every night. Yes, we bring a couple sides like hash browns, mashed potatoes, and rice. We usually stop in Cloquet together on the way up and grab the last minute things like this.

The worst thing we have ever forgotten was the coconut cooking oil. We caught our fish for the first night's dinner and got everything ready, then realized we had left the coconut oil in the car. We tried cooking fish many other ways, but when you rely on having oil to fry the fish, it put a damper on the trip and we ended coming out a couple days early. We will never forget the coconut oil again.