Great American Canoe Festival

ELY, MINNESOTA - Day Minus Nine This past weekend we took a bit of a break from our non-stop packing and headed down to the States to be a part of the first ever Great American Canoe Festival in Ely, Minnesota.

Here we are with some sick new shades – perks of being vendors at the event. Throughout the weekend we scored new stickers from all the vendors, and got the chance to learn about some really awesome groups and initiatives in the paddling and outdoors community, like Save the Boundary Waters and Leave No Trace. We can't wait to be in touch with some of the amazing people we met.

Some brand new experiences included biking on water (with all the other kids ten and under who were trying it out) and eating walleye ice-cream. We have yet to decide how we feel about the latter…

Between our shifts of manning our booth, we went to listen to a range of presentations about outdoor photography, Frank Wolf’s trips, kayaking in Greenland, wolves, walleye fishing, and making birch bark canoes. Erik is now more convinced than ever that with his new tips he will morph into a fish catching machine. We’ll see.

Walking out from Frank Wolf’s presentation, Erik turns to me, “he is the coolest person I have ever met in real life.” After watching his movies that evening we were only more excited and inspired by his adventures and filmmaking.

To stretch our legs after a weekend of chilling at our booth talking about the summer adventures to come, Erik and I climbed Eagle Mountain in the Boundary Waters, a short drive from Canada. Frank had mentioned doing the hike when we had talked and we recalled that it took 1.5 hours. We checked the time, glancing at our watches the entire way up the trail, thinking we must be horribly slow or he must not be human. As we ran most of the way back to keep the hike under 2.5 hours it turned out we’d misunderstood – he’d been talking about time to the summit… and here we were trudging out through the muddy slopes in my jeans and Birkenstocks as it began to thunder and rain...

Terrible Ideas 101

Now that we’re back, it’s a few more days of testing equipment, sorting food, checking maps, and loading it all up before we set out on June 21st.