The Boundary Waters - Part 2

We take off to the wilderness!

We have 3 canoes for this adventure.  My canoe is the Mad River Expedition (18 feet 6 inches long,  Kevlar, 55 pounds), and paddling up front is my Kiddo #2.

The rest of my family is in the Blue Canoe, the Swift Winisk at 17 feet long, and about 53 pounds or so.  (I haven't officially weighed it yet.)  Kiddo #1 is up front, Kiddo #3 is duffing in the center, or more accurately, bouncing around in the center, and Lovely Wife is paddling stern: 

Our friends rented a 3 person canoe.  Seated in the center are the two girls side by side.  They could really move out in that outfit.  I tried out their canoe sometime during this trip, and was impressed with how well it handled and its stability.  

I don't have any pictures of our first night's campsite, but suffice it to say, it was a pretty small site.  The picture below is a standard campsite "kitchen" with a fire grate.  We cooked all of our meals over a backpacker stove.  The camp chairs were super nice - it really beats sitting on a wet log.

Kiddo #2 is demonstrating the water filter.  It is a blue bag of lake water that runs through a filter and into a water bottle (via gravity).  Giardia and other water "bugs" are in the water, but can be avoided if you are careful.  Some people take a chance and don't treat their water.  I chose the more conservative path of filtering.  

In the middle of the big Cherokee Lake, we found a couple of big rocks suitable for climbing on.  Later on in the week, we would swim out to these rocks from our awesome campsite that I will show you.

Sometimes, those big rocks are just barely submerged

 and makes for a good "walking on water" picture.

At the end of the day, we were rewarded with a great sunset.  If you look real close, you can see a rock outcropping on the left side of this picture.  That will be our campsite for the next 2 nights.  

Yes - the next day, we decided to switch campsites from our super small site to one with a great rock peninsula to play on.  As a teaser for the upcoming Part 3, here is Kiddo #3 chilling out with lunch on that big rock peninsula the next day.  

More to come....