To Quetico Provincial Park

Bart, Jonathan, Chuck (Dad), and me.

Quetico Provincial Park is a large wilderness park in Ontario that borders the Boundary Waters area of Minnesota. It's a few thousand square miles and contains over 600 lakes, many so remote that few people ever go there.

My dad first went to Quetico when he was 16. If I had to guess, I'd say he's gone more than 30 or 40 times over the years--for several years both in spring and fall. Different people have gone with him, but for about 20 years, he and Bart have been going together. Sixteen years ago, my sister Sarah and I got to go and Bart and I were canoe partners. This year, we partnered up again and my husband Jonathan paddled with my Dad.


(Click on the photos to view them larger.)

Our pile of packs and gear in our motel room in International Falls, MN.

Tuesday morning, we all met at my parents' house in Ames, Iowa, and packed our gear and loaded the canoes onto Bart's truck. Soon we were on the road to International Falls, Minnesota. We dropped our stuff off in the Hilltop Motel, which is decorated with wolf posters and a kitschy cabin style, and headed to the Border Bar for some good pizza.

Day 1

We rose early in the morning, crossed the border and drove to Atitokan, Ontario, to the park office to get our permit (the reservation was made in December) and the services office to get our conservation fishing licences. With that taken care of, we were on the road to the Beaverhouse Lake entrance. To get there, one must drive a long and winding gravel road with few markers (I don't know how you'd find it if you didn't already know) to a parking lot. Then you carry all your stuff about a quarter mile before you even get to the water.

We crossed Beaverhouse Lake (lunching on peanuts, hard boiled eggs, and saltwater taffy on a rock island on this lake) and parts of Quetico Lake, which involved a few portages until we got to the start of Badwater Portage.

I'd been on Badwater Portage the time I came when I was a kid but I only vaguely remembered it. Badwater Portage is at least a mile (Jonathan thinks it's longer than a mile) up a rocky stream, over a bog, and down another rocky stream. It's long. It's rocky. It's slippery. I'd been hearing about it for months so I knew it was going to be bad.

We had to carry our backs which ranged from 30-45 pounds and the canoes. Bart and Dad did all the canoe carrying and decided to carry just the canoe, go back for the packs, and so on in sections. Jonathan and I helped carry the packs so we all did parts of it more than once.

I did not take photos while we were actively canoeing or portaging because I had to keep my camera packed away in a dry box. Therefore I do not have photos of a lot of the things that we saw. I did take a few photos on this portage during times that I was stopped and had time to get it out.

Badwater Portage

In the photo above you can see part of the stream portion of the "trail". Below, you can see exposed rock with glacial striations, which are grooves made when the glaciers passed over this place long ago.

Glacial striations on Badwater Portage

Weird mushroom on Badwater Portage

When Badwater Lake was visible at the end of the trail, it was a most beautiful sight! The whole process took us about an hour and a half.

Badwater Portage: Accomplished

Now in Badwater Lake, we made camp at a rocky point on the north side of the lake.

Badwater Lake from the campsite

Campsite on Badwater Lake

We rested. We did a lot of resting on this trip, which involved lying on the ground for hours at a time. You'd be surprised how relaxing rocks, dirt, and roots can be when you are physically tired. Dad built a fire. He and Bart ate steak (their tradition on the first night), and Jonathan and I ate a dehydrated meal--vegetarian lasagna. It wouldn't have mattered what it was, everything tastes better out there.

Baby snapping turtle

That evening, Jonathan was trying to fill our water bottles at the edge of the lake with the water filter Dad brought (it's a small handheld pump). It was not working very well. I'd used it earlier and given up because it wasn't working fast enough. Jonathan said he'd had enough and when inspected, we discovered the whole thing inexplicably was not working. At all.

What that meant is we were going to have to boil our drinking water for the rest of the trip. Yay.

Every night we went to bed around 8 p.m. Well, we retired to our tents anyway. We were tired and by that point we wanted to get away from the bugs. Jonathan and I shared a little 2-person backpacking tent. When they rate how many people fit in the tent, they mean that many people fit and nothing else. Just our air mats and ourselves with a few inches to either side. Our clothes were packed in dry bags in our packs, so our packs just spent the night outside.

One end of our tent is a huge window and we didn't use the rain fly that night. We also positioned our tent directly facing West, so we had the pleasure of the sun in our faces until it finally sunk down into this beautiful sunset:

Sunset at Badwater Lake

At one point in the night I woke up but I was still half asleep. I looked out the big window and saw the big dipper perfectly framed. I was sleepy and didn't have my glasses on, so it took me several moments to figure out what I was looking at. The stars were huge but looked fuzzy because I was seeing them through the screen of the window. It was really quite magical. I turned around and went back to sleep and forgot all about it until someone mentioned the stars the next day. I drew this 45-second drawing to show sort of how it looked:

It was one of the coolest parts of the trip.

More to come!