Vince is going canoeing this summer. He’s going with a scout troop from Atlanta to the Boundary waters in Minnesota/Canada. I found the other troop via an email list, so I haven’t actually spoken to them, but I have exchanged many emails. Is it OK to send your son into the wilderness with people we haven’t ever spoken to? I hope so. We are doing exactly one prep outing for this canoeing trip which happened this weekend. Jeremy’s pal Ben owns a number of canoes which came in handy for this practice.
They have to portage which means you flip the canoe upside-down so you can walk over the dry parts that you can’t canoe over. I’m not sure Vince is on this particular itinerary, but the longest portage at Northern Tier is 3 miles. That’s a lot of miles to walk with a canoe over your head.
To preserve the shorelines, the scouts must do wet and dry landings which means they don’t pull the canoes across the shorelines. They get in and out of the canoe when they can see the bottom of the lake from the canoe. This means that your shoes are always 100% wet and your pants are also pretty wet. Vince happily tested out his gear.
