“I'm told BWCA stands for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. If you ask me, it stands for Bugs & Woodticks Crawling on ... ”

Stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke
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Before I get into the BWCA, please know that photos have been added to my previous Belize blogs.  Please take a minute to check them out - there are many cool scuba pictures.

I'm told BWCA stands for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.  If you ask me, it stands for Bugs & Woodticks Crawling on Anne.

I'm told BWCA stands for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. If you ask me, it stands for Bugs & Woodticks Crawling on Anne.

Here we go!
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For those of you unfamiliar with the BWCA, it's a gigantic chain of lakes in the very north portion of Minnesota, on the Canadian boarder.  It is actually over 1,000,000 acres (that's BIG!), has over 1,500 miles of canoe routes, and over 2,000 campsites spread throughout the forest and lakes.

Each year Brian's school teacher brother, Scott, takes a group of high school seniors there at the end of the year.  Brian and I helped chaperone the group of 7 teenage boys this year, along with 2 other adults and Scott.

It's hard to eat an apple with a headnet on
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There's so much to say about the experience, I don't even know where to start.  First of all, let me tell you about this thing called "portaging".   To get between lakes you have to carry the canoe on top of your head, and that's called portaging.  One person carries the canoe, and the other person or people in the canoe have to carry all the other packs containing food, cookware, clothing, sleeping bags, etc.  Those packs weigh 40-60 pounds.  The portages we did ranged  between 1/2 mile long to a few hundred feet.

Lounging around camp
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I expected to see tons of wildlife, and was a bit disappointed by the lack thereof.  We did see about 5 bald eagles, a beaver, many turtles, and a few loons.  However we didn't see any bears or moose but we did find a pile of moose poop and a few hoofprints.  The one thing we saw a lot of were BUGS!  The black flies had just hatched, so we were surrounded by them the first night.  Good thing we picked up some headnets at Sawbill Outfitters.  We also saw way too many woodticks, and if there is one thing I hate, it's woodticks.  In fact, I think I hate them even more that Pica Pica! We also had the worlds biggest spider living on our tent for a day.  Seriously, I think it was a tarantula.

This one's for you, Schrieber!
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We ate like Kings - Scott takes the meals very seriously.  We had brats, steak, walleye caught by me (more about this later), pasta, french toast, pancakes and sausage.  It was all fantastic.

The best part of the whole trip was that I fished, and caught more fish that anyone!  Brian had to put the leech on my hook and Scott had to take the fish off the hock for me, but I caught many Walleye, and was able to provide dinner for the 5 chaperones.