BW Journal Day 7 7/10 Last full day in the BWCA

This is our last full day in the Boundary Waters. Obviously we are torn between leaving the beautiful environment of which we've enjoyed this week and the longing to get home. Here are some of the great (OK, maybe grim but fun) memories we'll always have.

After a couple days, our backs really started to ache. And we realized that we never had a way to sit in a chair or relax anywhere that supported our backs. Our primary options were single logs. A heavenly exception to this rule were the hammocks. Here I am in a hammock with 100% Deet on my legs and a headnet over my hat. Although it allows you to relax, you still hear the frustrated black flies buzzing past you; unable to bite. But this sounds like the pod races in Star Wars.



As you saw in an earlier post, the sunrise is pretty spectacular. Well, so is the sunset when the winds calm down and the water is like glass. If this isn't zen, I don't know what is.

 Here are me and Brian doing our chores. You have to wash the dishes after every meal because you only carry the minimum of pots, pans and dishes.

During the end of the week, Brian caught at least one fish and so did I. This breaks a 30 year dry spell for me for catching fish in the Boundary Waters.  As you can see from the map in the next post, we took a day trip to Zephyr Lake and had the whole place to ourselves. There it's easy to catch a fish and it's also easy to catch a rock.  I caught both.

As we made our plans for the long paddle back to our pick-up point at American Point, Brian and I became concerned about having to paddle into a headwind.  So I created this structure which is really just a big windvane. You can just barely see the long black telltale flying south near the top of the picture.