Boundary Waters, Trip Reports, BWCA, Stories

Brule and Winchell Lakes
by DrBobDerrig

Trip Type: Paddling Canoe
Entry Date: 07/21/2012
Entry & Exit Point: Brule Lake (EP 41)
Number of Days: 7
Group Size: 6
Part 3 of 10
Day 2 Sunday July 22  We took our time getting up today. Breakfast was scrambled eggs and bacon bits in soft tacos. We scrambled and froze them in double Ziplock bags before the trip. The GI tract of one of the guys doesn’t like the powdered egg from the Egg Store so we went this route this year. A day trip in the direction of Omega Lake was the plan for the day. My wife Lark and I paddled and explored while the rest tried their luck fishing. We had lunch on the west end of Omega and did the 35 rod (a steep up and down portage) into Kiskadinna. Kindof a blah lake….the two campsites weren’t very noteworthy according to our notes. We weren’t crazy or ambitious enough to do the 185R into Muskeg and eventually Long Island (where Lark and I had stayed with another couple several years earlier…before the Ham Lake fire). We worked our way back to Winchell. The lake water was really warm on all the lakes this trip. With a nice rock …swimming was next on the agenda.  The dinner menu that night was cheeseburgers, terryaki rice, and Oreo cheesecakes. No-Bake cheese cakes seem to be a requirement for every BW canoe trip. A few more canoe parties showed up today. One group went climbing the rock face on the south side of Winchell. Hoped they knew what they were doing. That night some pretty good rain showers came through…one thing we have noticed is that the usual mosquito swarms around 9:30PM haven’t appeared…in fact the bugs weren’t bad at all…even them nasty deer flies. Boundary waters isn’t boundary waters without a visit from the loons and hearing them party during the night.