Off to Minnesota We Go

August 4, 2012 Canoe Base Day 1

                The day was young as we set out on a journey of a lifetime. We are heading to Minnesota to canoe in the boundary waters.  I’m uncertain of what to expect along this voyage, however I do know that this experience is going to be one that stays with me for the rest of my life.   Every day I plan to make the most of and make every moment count because if my spend my time paying attention to every little detail I’m going to be missing out on the scope of my journey.

                In total we had twenty four people going along for this trip. Each person was divided into groups of eight people plus a guide.  I am the crew chief of my group; my responsibility is to assign various tasks to be done by my other crew members. These tasks consist of fire set up, cooking, cleaning, and tent set up and fetching water.

                Today when we arrived in Minnesota we went to the Mall Of America, which is the largest mall in America.  We looked around for a couple hours and explored what the mall had to offer. Before going on this trip I had been to this mall before so its size didn’t faze me as much as the other people in the group. After the mall we drove for about an hour and a half and stopped at pizza hut for some dinner. We then headed out to a church where we would be spending the night. Once every one had settled in we had a crew meeting to discuss how far we wanted to canoe.  We had some print outs of already set out treks that we could choose from that gave a brief description of the route, the difficultly and the amount of portages.  We all shared a similar interest in the scenic lakes route which was seventy miles and had about forty portages however we had an alternative if that route we planned on didn’t work out we’d go on the bear loop which was only fifty five miles and we could add more miles if we wanted to. Tomorrow we are off to Duluth to see Lake Superior and the Merit Time Museum. Who knows what may lie ahead of us in the coming days, but the way I see it every day brings on a new adventure and it’s up to us to explore the possibilities and endure the world around us.