BWCA Bucket List Trip
by Micanthropyre
With a leisurely amount of time spent breaking camp, we loaded the canoes and headed to Thunder Point. Beautiful view from up there, well worth the hike up and time spent! It was nearly noon before we started on our second leg of the trip to SAK. It was shortly before 2pm when we arrived to check out Campsite 1433 - it was nice but with it being a little early in the day we decided to check out a couple other sites despite our previous rule of “if the site is good, take it”. Campsite 1431 was also open, but we liked the previous one better so we pushed to check out the last site on this island. Unfortunately, it was taken, so we looped around the backside to check out some other sites on our way back to 1433. After the next few sites either being taken or not as good as 1433 we headed around the point and were swiftly reminded why breaking the campsite rules are bad - it was now occupied. 1431 - Occupied. There were a number of canoes circling around looking for sites, it was quite the parade of nature tourists just like us. We headed across in an increasing wind to Campsite 1459 and started unloading when we noticed a pretty large widowmaker looming over the site. A quick push against it easily moved the daily large diameter birch tree, and so after a quick vote we decided to abandon the site with possible rain overnight and try for the last site that we had checked that was empty - Campsite 1435. Luckily it was open and we started setting up camp. Our mixed bag of Draumrs and tents proved to be fortunate for us - there were two OK tent pads and a couple of very workable hammock spots. Lesson learned - if you come to a site in your target area that will work, don’t get too picky!