The real beginnings of this trip can be traced back a few years, when my good friend James took me kayaking on the Wisconsin River. I had recently rediscovered fishing after 15 years of rarely picking up a pole, and when I took my first few casts from the borrowed kayak I was hooked. On that trip, James suggested we start kayak camping, with an eventual goal of getting to the BWCA. The initial plan was simple: camp the dunes on the Lower Wisconsin a few times, step up into one of the flowages in the northern part of the state that has distributed camping, and once we felt ready plan for the BWCA. The next summer we had June plans to camp on the dunes, but Mother Nature had other ideas for us. The river was raging high after several days of rain so not only were campable dunes going to be scarce, but areas of the river were also going to be dangerous. A last-minute decision to head up to the Willow Flowage was made. One successful and highly enjoyable trip later and James was ready to plan for the BWCA - were getting into our 40s and should make our camping mistakes now. Hours spent on Paddle Planner and trolling through various forums yielded us with our eventual plan: we worked with Williams and Hall to get a Moose Lake permit for June 1st with a return of June 7th. The plan was relatively simple: get a tow to Birch, make our way out to South Arm Knife and base camp a few nights and see some of the nearby sights, then either make our way back or if we were feeling spry, head through Sema to Spoon and work our way through those lakes to Ensign for a pickup. Its difficult to understand the distances just looking at maps, so we kept the itinerary pretty open. When I talked to my brother Sean about it he sounded interested and quickly took up my invitation to join us. With his addition to the party, I began thinking about a fourth person so we werent trying to fish out of a 3 person canoe or making a first time trip with a solo paddler. Jon, who has done a fair amount more camping and traveling than the three of us combined and a lifelong friend to boot joined up and the party was set.