Mudro Family Trip
This is the first time I've been overnight in the Boundary Waters since our 2019 trip with the kids and our subsequent move to Ely. It's shocking how I can live so close and yet an overnight in the B-Dub seems so hard to achieve.
We woke up at 5, showered, got Silas to his second family, and were driving up the Echo Trail by 6:45. The parking lot wasn't too crowded and we were able to park in the second spot in the lot.
There were a couple other families heading in at the same time; one a mom and dad with two teenage sons and the other a husband and wife. The husband and wife were staying on Fourtown and the couple with kids were heading towards the Crooked Lake area.
It didn't take us very long to get our things unloaded and portaged down to the landing. We were able to establish who would carry what quickly. The water was fairly shallow and we walked the canoes a fair ways.
This is the first time I am in the stern. The "littles" aren't anymore and we have outgrown our ability to overnight in one canoe. Sad day for sure. BUT it has given me the opportunity to step up and work on my paddling skills. I didn't do too badly. 😁
The wind was starting to pick up as we crossed Mudro Lake. Isabel and I fell into a smooth rhythm as we glided across the lake. Curt and Caleb were taking lead and Caleb was learning how to navigate with the map. After one slight misread, (He was going towards Sandpit, but we were able to correct him before the boys went too far the wrong way) we made our way to the portages into Fourtown.
The three portages into Fourtown are just as rocky and rooty as I remembered. Our food barrel is the heaviest it has ever been and I am not the specimen of athletic ability I was a few years ago. Not that I was stellar then either-lol. Overall I didn't do too bad, but Isabel was by far the most impressive. That girl rocked out the portage packs on her double portages.
We knew there was a storm coming some time that afternoon or evening, so we decided to stay on Fourtown our first night. The winds would begin picking up sometime around lunchtime and we endeavored to be completely set up before that happened. We were looking for an eastward facing campsite, or one that faced that direction as much as it could, and headed toward the bay with the portage into Boot. The winds were picking up and our underweighted canoes were beginning to get blown around a little bit. Thankfully, the winds were from the south/southwest, so we didn't have to fight a head wind.
As we are traveling, we are always on the hunt for good firewood. Driftwood & beaver wood offer some of the best burning wood out you can get.
We found the campsite nearest the Boot portage unoccupied, and we quickly remedied that situation.
We quickly explored our campsite and do all the chores needed when you first get to camp. This site only had a small area for tents and not much to offer for the "kitchen." If we weren't trying to beat a storm, we probably wouldn't have chosen this site, but it worked ❤️.
Pretty soon the storm hit. Caleb and I sat outside under our tarp and watched the rain while Curt and Isabel slept. It was great sleeping weather, but they missed out on this:
Curt was feeling pretty achy on this day. He slept quite awhile, which is out of character. That should have raised red flags, but we were so happy to be on our canoe trip that we didn't connect dots.
<sigh>
This day called for zero rain and lots of sunshine. They lied. But we still managed to hang out
And then the rain came
Again, Caleb and I enjoyed the shower while Curt and Isabel napped. When they woke up, we had a yummy supper of fried fish, spaghetti, and pan bread. We bought a reflector oven and this was its maiden voyage. It worked great!
This was our last evening at the Fourtown Campsite. We packed up the next morning and moved on. But first we spent some time being entertained by this seagull.
Portages are basically just short hiking trails between lakes. Some are dirt and flat. Others are rocky and oftentimes they are a hill. The hill part makes sense because it's the land between two lakes. In order to have 2 lakes there has to be an elevation change between them. The whole rocky part can get pretty bad though.
The portage between Fourtown and Boot is flat, flat, flat with very little rocks. Well, all the rain made it muddy in several parts. But it's a pretty spot.
With beautiful weather and no rain in the forecast, we took our time finding a campsite. Kind of. The boys investigated the first available site and we chose to go on. Curt was starting to feel pretty crummy and so we ended up taking the next available one. I probably forgot to mention the fever he had through the night... Just so you don't worry, when we got home he tested for covid just to be safe (negative) and we are pretty sure he has some type of UTI/bladder/kidney infection.
Moving on...
We went and gathered some more wood and prepared to hang out in the sunshine, foraging for berries, and fishing.
Instead, it rained. We are cursed.
Curt has been watching this YouTube channel called 3 Minutes with a Maine Guide. She is a canoe guide who used to be a baker. She shows all sorts of cool things, but one of the things she does is bake bread on trail. So, we thought, "Why not?"
I've never baked bread at home, let alone in the woods in a reflector oven, but we (me) gave it a shot.
It was awesome. Not sure I would have been super thrilled with how it turned out if we had been at home, but camping? It was fillet mignon.
We went and explored the woods around us and picked blueberries. Curt quit early and came back for a nap.
I hung out in my hammock some more
and then the storm rolled in. Again.
This time we had some notice so we got the kids' tent prepared for games.
It stormed for a couple hours. We played Phase 10. Caleb rage quit at least 5 times and Curt slept. He ended up sleeping over 5 hours on this day. The man was sick. 😢
It was at this point we decided to cut our trip short. We had already opted to not do the loop we were going to do, but when Curt just didn't get better we knew we needed to go home. Knowing this was our last night we had double the s'mores in celebration. Our dinner was spent dodging rain showers and trying to keep the fire going so we could cook our pizzas in the reflector oven. It was tough and exhausting -lol.
It stormed the entire night. And when I say stormed, I mean stormed. Thankfully we were protected from most of the wind.
The morning gave way to this beautiful display:
Because we were leaving early we decided to eat the heaviest food we had in the barrel to make it as light as possible. That meant pancakes for breakfast. But not just any pancakes. We had scored quite the harvest of blueberries and we feasted! Wild Blueberry Pancakes. Mmmm. Mmmm. Mmmmmmmmm
Overall the trip wasn't what we had hoped or planned. As I type this out, Curt is snoring in his chair. He still doesn't feel good and we'll be headed to the doctor tomorrow.
We had a wonderful time. It was amazing to see the maturity growth in our two youngest. Isabel is becoming a young woman and Caleb is no longer the baby I cradled in my arms while he cried all night long. Somewhere along the way I blinked.
In the bow of the canoe paddled a girl who has changed more in the last 3 months than I care to admit. She still shows signs of being that little girl that drove me crazy, but she's growing up. It was fun to be with her and hear her thoughts, her dreams, and her questions. It was like getting to know her all over again, even though we live in the same house. With no distractions it was easy to do.
It's hard to put into words what this trip brought to me. Maybe more than anything it opened a new chapter of our story. The chapter where we begin the process of parenting our last 2 babies into adulthood. The truth is, in 5 years Isabel will be heading to college. Those years go so quickly. I know this from Emily and Gabe.
I'd give anything to go back 5 years and cuddle all my kids in close. If I could freeze time, it would have been then. But time marches on. So for now and the next 5 years I am going to treasure these times and make new memories.
Once upon a time, Isabel rode in the canoe between Curt and me. This last trip she moved to the bow. I know the next step will be paddling her own boat. That hurts.
But it also makes me excited for her. I wonder what she'll choose to paddle and who she'll paddle with. ❤️
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