Mom & 2 young sons
by CharChar
We missed the eclipse. It was hazy at 12:30 and then cloudy.
The portage to Scoop Lake was a bit troublesome. We decided to double portage the rocky path and my 9yo fell behind. I went back to get him after setting down the canoe to find him on his back between two boulders “like a turtle on his back” (his words). He was panicking a bit, but became sheepish when I leaned over and reminded him there were clips on the front that he simply had to unclip. Getting the 25lb pack back on him on future portages would be an argument not often worth having, though he would take it a few more times.
As we portaged into Cherokee Creek, it began to rain, but we still stopped for our after-a-difficult-portage-candy. I mentioned to the boys that it was supposed to be a lovely creek, but none of us noticed as we paddled ferociously toward Cherokee Lake. We came into site 901 at 4:30pm and began setting up camp. We all were completely amazed at how beautiful a campsite it was. Either the BWCA has gorgeous campsites or we are used to really bad ones. We underestimated how long it would take to get the water flowing, cook dinner, wash dishes, make a fire, set up the tent, and get the bear rope up. The bear rope. We found out that we are absolutely terrible with the bear rope. Our slight frames (barely 300lbs between us all) just wasn’t working trying to pull a rope that was at all restricted by other pine branches. If we had anything but an absolutely clean pull, we just couldn’t do it. We tried 2 people pushing up the food bags, 2 people pulling, all 3 pulling, paddles, jumping, squatting, standing, you get the picture. We got it 8 ft in the air and decided that our bags were fairly scent proof and we could make it back home tomorrow with no food and warmed up by the fire before bed. Every time someone went out to the bathroom at night, we asked “food still there?” This would be a common occurrence throughout the trip. That night my 9yo was tired and cold and crying of homesickness, he said the Boundary Waters were not at all what he imagined and was a bit surprised that I had brought him so far from civilization (I think the lack of wifi was the most incredulous) I did my best to calm him and said we’d talk in the morning.