Day -1 (pre-trip)

I left Rochester Tuesday evening (June 21) and met up with Steve in Coon Rapids. We stayed up going through gear and figuring out what we'd need from each of us and what the final gear list would be. Here's what the packing looked like:




Here's our transportation for the trip. Notice the nice shine on the bottom the canoe before the trip. Didn't look quite that glossy afterwards. :)We met up with our older brother Paul in Grand Rapids to get a ride up to International Falls. After checking the Weather Channel we saw what we didn't want to see... storms coming in from the Dakotas. Soooo, we talked about our game plan and decided to put in on Kabetogama instead of Rainy in case the weather hit. We decided to camp at Woodenfrog state campground on the west end of Kabetogama and put in right from there in the morning. We'd still be crossing all of Voyageur's National Park and dealing with some big water but there were would be campsites along the way we could hunker down at if weather hit. We loaded up Paul's truck and drove up to the Falls and picked the permit up in Cook along the way.



We got up to Woodenfrog and explored the campground a bit. There was a nice boat landing that we would use for our launch. The flies were terrible - our backs were covered with them walking around. The campground was nice - I'd like to do a Voyager's trip with boats some time - and we sat around the campfire for a bit looking forward to the day to come.



After a fitful night with the long day of paddling and the chance of some nasty storms looming, we got up at first light and headed to the boat landing.