October is truly one of my favorite months! The smells – OH the smells and what better way to experience them and all that October has to offer by tent camping!
We headed up over this MEA weekend on Friday to one of our favorite destinations, Savannah Lake. Savannah Lake is within the Savannah Portage State Park and is a simple 2.5 hour drive basically right up the road for us. We ditched our motor boat for the canoe and used the logic of – can we take it to the BWCAW next Spring? No? Then we don’t need to pack it now.
Of course we took a few luxuries such as our camp stove, camping chairs, the dutch oven and our gynormous camping tent!
It was just us, plus our two friends Pam & Phil on this trip. While we waited for their arrival, miss K, Jason and I played Tic-Tac-Toe on the ground using rocks and pine needles as our x’s and o’s, and little miss was entertained for hours. I’m kind of ashamed to admit she beat badly about half the time, even when I was actually trying!
As stated previously we brought the canoe, for the sole purpose of testing it out with the dogs. We took my friends suggestion of leashing the dogs, with Sadie (our JRT) in the front, and then me, then Kiki, then Niko (our Mastiff) and lastly Jason.
All it took was about 50 feet of paddling to decide that Niko was officially uninvited to the BWCAW trip! He would lean one way or another to try and lick the water as Jason paddled, or watch the water, and I would then with all of my might have to try and counter the weight. Kiki was terrified that we were going to tip over, and truthfully so was I. We were all very motivated NOT to tip over since it was a brisk 42 degrees air temp at launch time.
With his massive size already at over 80lbs, and with him going to be likely around 120lbs by the time we take the trip, we decided its just not worth it right now. We will probably still bring Sadie with, but she is much more manageable.
It was a really enjoyable trip though all and all. We ended up going on a three mile hike, ate amazing meals, fished, canoed, and shared great stories around the fire! We were even visited by 19 Trumpeter Swans and were awoken Saturday morning with their symphonic band practice at 6:30 a.m.
All and all I really enjoyed this rather fairly minimalistic version of camping vs. glamping!
We even decided on night two to ditch the cot and sleep on the ground, because after all we’re not hauling our cot to the BWCA with us, and you know what? It was actually quite pleasant.
The next time we’re going camping we will officially be in the BWCAW. I’m hoping that my high dreams do not disappoint, but its quite easy to get carried away with the planning, but so far its been half the fun!
Little Blessed Life 