We planned to hit the road from Central Iowa for the 7 hour trip around 7AM. When I arrived at Brad’s to pick up him and Jason, Brad let the group know that he would not be going. He had been dealing with a medical issue that he thought he might be able to work through but ultimately decided it would put a damper on the trip for him and possibly add a lot of work for us. So we took off around 7:15 and with a short stop at Cabellas south of the cities we made it to Duluth in time to grab a round of drinks just after lunch at Bent Paddle. After that quick pit stop, we headed to Ely and made it in time to grab a good dinner at the Boathouse (always get the Poutine), and have a round of drinks. We bought an extra and let it sit full during our dinner in honor of our missing man.

We headed out of town for our overnight stop at Lodge of the Whispering Pines. Denise was very accommodating of our group. After hemming and hawing about whether we wanted to do a 2 man and a solo, a 3 man, or a 4 man canoe, we landed on a 3 man. This turned out to be a good decision for our group. We spent the rest of the evening doing final preparations, which included paring down our food to only 1 MRE per person for our last night’s meal which would be “emergency rations” in the case that we couldn’t catch enough Walleye to add a meal or two. This would prove to be overkill.