A Coating of Sand - TAYLOR BAY (LAKE OF THE WOODS) - Day Fifty Five

While a beach is a glamorous idea for a campsite, the sand after three such nights is absolutely everywhere. It's in your sleeping bag and down the barrels and in the pots and lining your clothes. But along the way, before we got this coating of sand, we have been living at some Southern holiday quality beaches.

Sable Islands is a string of islands connected by shoal and made from rolling sand dunes. Sitting atop one of the crests we watched fishing boats zoom past in every direction. In September, the walleye from Lake of the Woods travel up the Rainy River for their yearly spawning, making this bay by the mouth of the river a fishing hotspot in late summer.

After leaving the protection these islands offered from the wind, we found ourselves in some big rollers that took us into our next beach home. The waves coasted in and with the fine white sand and view out of a lake that meets the sky with no land between, we felt like guests at a Caribbean resort. We even surfed the waves in an empty canoe, paddling out against the wind and soaring back in on the crests of breaking rolls. We filled the afternoon with races down the stretch of sand and eating fresh corn on the cob and finding an absolutely massive fish head. The pelicans constantly soaring above were always a spectacle worth watching, with their huge wings flapping then locking out to coast on the warm wind. We the had a splendid sunset to stroll the beach and see what lay beyond the point the next morning.

What we discovered when we woke, was a paddle through some waves that rocked the boat side to side before we tucked behind windy point and received enough shelter to make an 8km crossing. Soon the waves returned and so we set up for the night on a new beach in a little bay with a perfect breeze to fish from the boat and float back in.

While the bay we camped in with the small beach and two rocky points on either side was a dream location, I found myself in quite the dilemma. It was a hot day and the whole stretch of beach offered no more than a sliver of shade. And while swimming is usually the answer, we had seen a few leeches that stretched out to 9 inches squirming along by the shore. I don't know if I've ever seen a more terrifying site. In the end Erik filled our water filter bag and dumped it on me like an icy shower because I refused to touch the lake. As we move North in the next days, we will miss these beaches but welcome the chance to rid every item we carry of sand.