April Isle of Pines Trip

By Auralee Strege

Dates:April 27-30, 2012
Entry Point:25 - Moose Lake (BWCA)
Type:Canoeing
Lakes:Birch, Carp, Knife, Moose, Moose, Newfound, Portage, Seed, Sucker

Ben and I just got back from the BWCA last Monday after doing a 4 day trip to celebrate the end of tax season! The weather was fairly nice: 50s and sunny in the daytime and low 30s at night. We went to Knife Lake, one of the busiest lakes in the summer, from entry point 25. We didn't catch any fish (the border lakes are open) and spent most of our time exploring the other campsites on the lake; Ben likes to gather information on the sites and put ratings about them on his canoeing site mncanoeing.com. We camped on an island next Dorothy Molter's Isle of Pines island. Dorothy Molter was a woman who lived in a cabin on Isle of Pines island before the Wilderness Act. She was most well known for giving refreshments of homemade root beer and candy bars to passing travelers.

Ben and I explored the island and found some shingles from a cabin and old bottle caps. We tried finding the "bacon rock", one of the rocks Dorothy used to sit on, but never saw it. Here is a picture I found online of what it looks like.



There was a light rain on the last night and morning as we were packing up that went away as the day progressed. The food pack was almost completely empty portaging out - we have the food planned out just right for these short trips. It was a fun trip and great way to get us in shape for some of our other trips this year.