Boundary Waters, Trip Reports, BWCA, Stories

Bucket List – Woodland Caribou Provincial Park 2018
by Hueyav8r

Trip Type: Paddling Canoe
Entry Date: 08/10/2018
Entry & Exit Point: Woodland Caribou
Number of Days: 8
Group Size: 4
Trip Introduction:
Bob, Barb, Jimmy, John (me) My friend Bob is in his 70s but has gone on trips to the BWCA, Quetico, Algonquin Park and numerous back packing trips. He was asked if there was a trip on his bucket list. He mentioned that he wanted to go to Woodland Caribou. He had talked to Redlake outfitters at CanoeCopia in the past. We met first in March of 2017 to start the planning process and pick a weekend. We chose the week of August 10th. But figuring it would be a two day drive from Indianapolis to Redlake Ontario we decided to begin our drive on Friday the 8th. The route we chose was going in at Leano Lake access point and coming out at Johnson Lake access point. This route would take us through some smaller waterways up into Mexican Hat Lake, then over to Glenn Lake before turning east and working our way out to Johnson Lake. The maps I would need would be the 52L15 and 52L16. The Outfitter had them for sale laminated but was going to be costly. I found a guy on line that had recently updated the maps with the portage points and camping sites. He didn’t have them for sale but he shared the pfd files with me at no charge. Thank you Glen. I was able to crop off the sections I was going to need (this was a problem later, in my story) and laminate them. Plus I had the route in Canoeing.com and uploaded to my GPS (this was also a problem later in my story).
Day 1 of 8
Friday and Saturday, August 10 & 11, 2018 Day one and two

The drive from Indianapolis was a long one. We drove the first day to Virginia MN about 11 hours drive time and the second day the drive to Redlake was about 6.5 hours of drive time. Found our Outfitter, Redlake Outfitters and paid the balance of the trip and coordinated a time to leave in the morning.