Boundary Waters, Trip Reports, BWCA, Stories

One less item on the Bucket List - Wabakimi 2011
by jcavenagh

Trip Type: Paddling Canoe
Entry Date: 08/03/2011
Entry Point: Other
Exit Point: Other  
Number of Days: 12
Group Size: 4
Day 2 of 12
Thursday, August 04, 2011 Aug. 4 – Up at 7 and on the road by 7:45. Grabbed coffee and a bite and headed up the beautiful north shore of Lake Superior. What a view! Got to the border at 11:30 CDT [12:30 EDT, all times are EDT until further notice…I’ll explain…] We had to sit while they checked to see if we were natural born killers, or just good guys. Pat was in the Army so his passport has stamps from Kuwait, Iraq, Germany, Egypt, and more. After a while they came out and asked “What states have you lived in?” Me: Illinois, Pete: Illinois, Pat: Illinois, Wisconsin, Florida, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona…I jumped in here and said “All courtesy of the US Army.” That is what they were actually looking for and we were cleared for entry. There was a guy busted for trying to bring pot into Canada. An older guy, with 20-somethings had a Dodge Durango filled with gear. They were directed to the long steel tables. Once the pot was discovered, every single piece of gear and clothing was dumped and thoroughly searched. The older guy and two of the younger guys were just starting to out it all back in the truck as we drove away. We guessed their trip was a bust! 1:15 and Thunder Bay bound. After lunch we headed east, turned north, and were completely out of town and haulin’ a** to Armstrong.

Arrived at Wildwaters about 4:15.

Thunder Bay to Wildwaters in about 2.25 hours) We knew Dave was already there because there was the Flying Moose, waiting for us on the front lawn of the outfitter. We dumped our gear, met Dave, and then had to decide whether we would go through Funger Lake as planned, or re-route south of the park and take a shorter trip. There was a forest fire burning on the north shore of Funger. Burt said it was still pretty small, but he wanted to give us options. We talked it over for about 2 minutes. We didn’t want to shorten out trip and we were there for adventure, so we all decided to go the original route. We went through the maps and trip notes with Burt and then went to town and had dinner and then re-packed all our gear to mix and match my stuff with Dave’s. We probably had enough gear to outfit another 2 guys and then some, so a lot of stuff was left in the cars. We sat up and chatted with the Burt, Brenda, and their summer intern, Rebecca, until 10:30 or so and then off to bed.