5 Days Wilderness Camping With Girlfriend And Dog In Boundary Waters

Well Sierra, Skeeter and I are heading into the Boundary Waters. We've been planning this trip since January. We got four nights, five days, and yeah we got everything we need to survive in the wilderness for the next week. Come on Skeeter. Oh you might want to tip your rod down. Your fishing rod on your right hand side there or just point it in front of you. So we're coming up on our first port here and in the Boundary Waters, for those of you that don't know, it is a wilderness area so like nothing is marked. Like no campsites are marked. There's no like signs, no marking tape, no paint on the trees, nothing. So you gotta, I mean it's marked on a map so you gotta know how to read a map but nothing like, there is no sign like here's the portage or anything. You gotta like, you gotta find it. So that's kind of what makes this place special is that it is like true wilderness and a lot of these portages and campsites were the same portages and campsites that a lot of the Native Americans would use. So they're like ancient trails so it's kind of cool. And here comes Sierra with the last pack. Beast mode. So this is the last challenging portage that we have on this trip until the way back. There's kind of three right off the bat on this route and they're challenging. They're up and down, a lot of rocks, a lot of ankle breakers but we are through with those so it is smooth sailing from here. I think we're going to come back a different way. We're going to kind of make a loop so we shouldn't have to do those more up and down rocky portages on the way back. The other ones are longer on the other way but they're a lot more flat so not too bad. All right so we paddle this river for a little bit and it dumps us out into a bigger lake. So if you're wondering why Skeeter has a life jacket on, I mean I'm not too big into dressing up dogs but hey the water temperature is really cold this time of year. But he is a bird dog so and I'm not worried about us tipping the canoe but he has jumped in after birds before. He did it one time on a river and I had to like one hand grab him and I got him into the canoe and there was a current there so it was really sketchy. So with him having the life jacket on it's just kind of uh puts me at ease a little bit. It's I kind of get rid of a little level of anxiety. I'm kind of worried about him jumping in if a duck flies over or something. At least I know he floats this way. Good boy. Did you try to eat that bug? Okay so I think this is going to be our last portage before we set up camp. We got we're gonna paddle around here and then it kind of opens up into a bigger part of the lake and we're gonna try to find a campsite up in there. Pretty nice landing actually. Oh geez. Peter do you want a treat since you were such a good boy? Yeah he wants one. He wants several. So we're gonna have something hot no matter what eh? Yeah. We'll get a fire going then. Oh no. Oh no. Oh he saves it. Almost a camp disaster. It's pretty good. Much needed. You said the same thing. Is that what you said? I said it's pretty good. You said it's pretty good. Pretty good. These eyes are crying. These eyes have seen a lot of love. I actually thought for sure we were gonna get dumped on for a second there. It is firewood processing time. Perfect. Now that we got camp pretty well dialed in, Sierra and I are gonna go out and fish. It's a little windy out there so depending on the wind we might go and explore one more lake tonight but we will see. The main mission is to catch a fish or two. Sierra's on the board. Nice one. Let's get this baby back in though. Oh yeah. You take it pretty good. Got it. Perfect. Nice. Sierra and I just took a short little portage. We didn't bring the canoe. We just walked it just to come check out this little lake. It's a really pretty little lake. So we're back from checking out that little lake. Now we're just going to take our time and fish on the way back to the turtle. We're just gonna take our time getting back to camp and fish. Yeah we got all day to go not very far so. Skeeter. You are being such a good camp dog buddy. So nice to have you here. Good boy. Good boy. I know you'd rather be hunting. Looks so good. Smells so good. Well it was a good day today. We made it to where we wanted to. Tomorrow we're actually going to backtrack. We're gonna, we kind of decided to go with a different route a little bit. So we have a couple portages tomorrow. One, some, it's not really that long. It's just it's like medium and then yeah we're gonna base camp out of a different lake. Anyways we're gonna wind down the night with a couple s'mores. I'll see you guys in the morning. Good morning Skeeter. We're gonna need caffeine for our paddle today. Yes we will. I'm just kidding we're gonna take We'll be fine. It'll be easier than yesterday. Yeah that's a good press. It's a two pot morning this morning. It's a travel day so we got to get pretty wired. Whoa. Really got to make sure that our coffee ziplock is sealed properly because that would be devastating if this came open and spilled all over the barrel. I would definitely take everything out and scoop it back into the bag though. That's what he was doing. He's putting his paws up there and he'd like like lean and like fall and make the whole thing again. Okay it's like all right sit down. No paws on the gunnels. He's been so good though. He has been so good. Yeah this is really Skeeter's first like long canoe trip you know. And camping. And he's been the canoe several times like a lot but usually just for you know like a day or whatever. Or for like not an hour. Yeah like just a quick little fishing excursion but yeah it was kind of it's a new thing with him like loading up the gear and having him and everything but he's done really well because you know if you did dump like and then you have to scramble to get your gear the canoe and then you have to worry about a dog potentially drowning that's kind of a lot. Yeah it's a lot. Where it's like okay at least he floats you know. Yeah. There's that so. Well we've wrapped up our morning coffee. Now we're going to get some firewood because for breakfast we are having McGriddles. So if you're in the market for a water filter this is the Sawyer Mini I believe. They make a bigger one. Definitely spend the extra ten dollars on the bigger one because the stream that comes out of this pretty slow. Kind of labor-intensive. Go like this though and kind of clamp like that. You can really get a nice use your your boob muscles. Yeah. Just get after it. We really just need to get the bigger one. You need to get a gravity filter. Yeah. We just hang a bag and call her good. Looks like 100 bucks though but pretty worth it. Yeah. Cut out a lot of time. I mean this works it's just annoying. Yeah and it it does take time. And I'm a and I'm a hydrator so you know. And boom goes the dynamite. Nice work Camp Chef. Here's breakfast. It's kind of like a McGriddle. Pancake taco. Scrambled eggs and bacon. And Skeeter's got a little plate too because he's a good boy. Gotta feed the beast. I'm gonna leave it in there. Here you go buddy. Oh yeah. I think tomorrow too. Do we have enough eggs? Yeah. Sweet. How do you like this camp? Huh? That was a good one. It was. Skeeter are you ready? Skeeter are you ready? Come on. Come on. Come. Skeeter over here bud. Back here. Can you hop in? Skeeter. Right here. Right here. Come on. Get in there. Go on. Go on. Come on. Do I need to help you? Do you need assistance? Come on. Here bud. Come on. Come on. There you go. Good boy. Sorry gang. And we're off. It is. Had a good time. Had a good time here. Portage number one. So here's the portage that I just carried the canoe down. This one's pretty easy. I think it's only like 45 rods or something like that. Pretty flat. It's up to you. You can try that. I got tube jigs. I got. I got. What else do I have? You want to try a tuber? I also have like a little green tuber like this. That might be sexy. Get him. Okay so we just portaged around these. Kind of had to make our own portage. I mean you could tell there was a little faint footpath where the previous groups have gone. Because the water's really high this year. So we kind of had to put in a different landing to get around these. Kind of get creative and go up a pretty steep embankment. But we got her. So now we're going to go across this little pond. The morale is high. And we're uh the next portage is right there. And then that dumps us into our our lake that we're going to camp at tonight. Sierra's going beast mode. She's taking the barrel. You got that? So awkward with Okay so we made it over to this little lake. And it's wide open. We're gonna have the whole thing to ourselves. Our own wilderness lake. So romantic. So here's what we got going on in here. A little ground cloth. Our gear. Kind of our charging station for our cameras. You know so we can keep those all charged. And then yeah it has this interior bug net. So that's nice. It's got a bathtub floor. This is a four season tent again. So um you know you can during the winter you don't need the bug net. And this will all just be an open teepee. Which is nice. But I do like that they give you a bug net. And it's got plenty of room for Sierra and I and Skeeter. So not bad. Not a bad home for the week. So Sierra and I are heading out. Gonna try to catch some fish. The lake is like glass right now. And we have the whole lake to ourselves. So the possibilities are endless. Sierra's got a fish at home. Oh my god. It's a fighter. No a bass would have jumped out of the water. Are you sure? Yes. You want to grab it? Here I'll grab it. There you go buddy. It's a fish Skeeter. It's a fish. There's Sierra's fish. Finally. After us talking about how we were surprised we haven't caught a single thing yet. Nice kickoff. Oh it's a northern. It's a baby northern. I guess I didn't want to touch it anyway. It works. It is a nice one. Okay and we're leaving this campsite. Our portage is just right there. You can see it. I think it's an 85 rodder. Not too bad. That will put us into our next lake that we're going to camp on. Well I think this is going to be our last portage for for the day for sure. And then what tomorrow's Thursday. So yeah we probably won't portage again until Friday. The day we leave. And we'll have a pretty easy like four mile maybe paddle slash portage out of here. So it'll make for an easy day on Friday. But yeah the morale is high today. We're feeling good. We're gonna go get set up at a camp and then do some fishing because we need to have a fish fry. Otherwise we're going to be eating buttered noodles. Not that those are bad. I actually love buttered noodles. But some fresh walleye or northern pike would be pretty good too. So we've made it to our campsite. We paddled across this huge lake behind me. If you can't tell it's very windy. It's sprinkling a little bit. But we got here just in the nick of time before the wind really picked up. But we're going to get settled in here. Get our tent set up. This is probably going to be our home for the next two nights. So we're going to make ourselves comfortable. Well the first order of business is we're going to get a fire going. That way we can cook our breakfast. We haven't we haven't had breakfast yet. So we're pretty hungry. Oh yeah she's cooking now. Oh my gosh. Yeah that's a lot better. Crispy. I think those are swans but I couldn't tell if they were rocks because they were staying really still for a long time. They're swimming away. It's adorable. Skier this has hot sauce on it. I'm not sure you're gonna like that bud. You already had eggs and bacon skier. Maybe you want some of yours. Now that breakfast is over we're gonna have hot chocolate for dessert. So I got water on there. Lake water. And then this is just gonna have to double as my lid. Just to heat up the uh or just speed up the boiling process. So you might be saying to yourself oh this doesn't that doesn't seem like a wilderness area. You know there's a fire grate and all that. And the reason why there is is so the way the Boundary Waters works. I mean you'd be pretty hard-pressed to find a more remote uh wilderness area than the Boundary Waters in the lower 48 states. Um you get you have to get a permit to come in here. You have to stop at a U.S. Forest Ranger station and pick up a permit. They even quiz you on stuff. Uh to make sure you can kind of handle yourself in the backcountry. They make sure that you know the rules. And the reason why there is a designated uh camp fire pit. And there's also a latrine which is basically just a hole in the ground that you poop in. Um it's because this is home to some of the cleanest water in the world. You can drink right out of the lakes. And if you allow this place to just be a free-for-all where nothing's regulated or any of that. I mean you know how people are. People will trash this place. You know you'll have garbage all over. People cutting down trees. Pooping all over. Um you know how people are. So that's why there's got to be designated campsites. And that's also to keep the place wild. That way you're reducing the impact on the surrounding area. You know if it's a free-for-all and people can just camp wherever they want. You know people will destroy it. That's just the way it is. Yeah you can kind of create your own adventure in here. You can you know if stay close to the entry point you might have a couple people around. You know if you don't want to do anything too extreme. Or if you want to go on a big adventure and get way out. Uh where you're not going to see anybody and have total solitude. And in a pure wilderness experience you can certainly do that. You know it's like anything the farther in you go less people there's going to be. Um in fact no people because a lot of people you know don't want to travel too far. So um you kind of get to pick your own adventure. But yeah this is a very wild place. There is you know no phone service. I mean depending on you know how far out you go there's nothing. Um you're on your own out here. So you have to have a little bit of knowledge of how to handle yourself in the backcountry. I mean people die in here every year. Um drowning. You know hypothermia. Storms. You know trees fall on people. It's really sad but uh that's the reality. So when you're out in a place where there is no help and it is all on you. You know you have to have just a little bit of knowledge on how to uh how to handle yourself. You know um in case you get yourself in a real situation because there is nobody here to help you really. So um that's the way it is. But that's what makes this place special is you kind of get that feeling of you know it's kind of rewarding to just take care of yourself and forage your own campfire wood and you know cook all your own food and not have any amenities. You know it's uh just a tent and whatever you whatever you pack in in the canoe is what you get. So um that's the way it is out here. That's why it's a special place. It's a bit nutty. Well Sierra and I were hunkered down in the tent for a few hours but the rain has stopped. The lake is calm so we're gonna go out and fish. Well we just went out fishing for about 20 minutes probably and got chased off the lake because of the rain. So we're back at camp. Um everything's pretty wet but we're gonna see if we can find some dry firewood to get a fire going because it'd be pretty nice to be sitting by right now. Well the rain just won't let up so I think we're pretty much gonna be chased inside the tent for the rest of the evening. Which is kind of a bummer because we were hoping to catch some fish and eat them tonight but um we'll have to do that tomorrow because we are officially out of meat that we brought. So we're pretty much down to pancakes and other miscellaneous stuff but yeah we're gonna be pretty much relying on fish tomorrow. Well we survived the rainy day yesterday and night. We're dry. The morale is high. We're having a quick easy pancake breakfast and then we're gonna get in the canoe and go out and try to catch some fish because we are out of meat at this point. So if we don't catch any fish it's gonna be pancakes or buttered noodles for dinner. And we want a fish fry. Sierra may be catching our dinner right now. I don't know it feels pretty good. I'd get the net if I were you. Feels big. It's gotta be a northern. Oh my god. That's big. Holy skater. Skater watch out. So Sierra just caught a 30 inch northern. So pretty nice fish. Didn't do too much filming. We were kind of worried about or more concerned with just getting it back in the water because we weren't gonna keep one that big. It's still early in the day. Plenty of fish left. We'll get into some better eating size. And yeah you know the more time that thing is out of the water the less chance it has to live. So out of more respect for the fish I handled the fish more than doing the filming. But nice fish though. It was fat. It was fat. It was a nice fish. It had good fillets on it. Yep so anyways I was able to release it and had a good kickoff. So all is well. Nice. It's a wolver. It's a wolver. I caught a walleye. Guys I just caught this nice walleye. I'm just kidding Sierra caught it. But look at that. Perfect eater. Look at the color on these up here. Nice fish Sierra. It's a beaut. It's one on the stringer and that is going to be catching our food right now. We got a we got a little northern on the stringer and now we're gonna have this. So right in the channel huh. 16 inch walleye. Perfect. Perfect eater. 16 inchers or 16 inches. Here's Sierra's stringer of fish. A wolver that's for sure good enough for one meal for us but a few more would be nice. Good job Sierra. Thank you for being a provider. So Sierra and I are on the other side of the lake right now. We were fishing. Some wind kind of picked up. We didn't bring any snacks with us. We're starting to get hungry. So we're heading back but it's like a mile and a half or so two miles across this lake. We got a pretty good headwind right here. It's not too bad but starting to get whitecaps over here. But we're gonna go back. We're gonna have buttered noodles with garlic salt. Kind of a simple lunch. Then we got those two fish on the stringer that we'll save for dinner and have fish and chips tonight. But we are going to go back out after lunch and kind of hang out on our side of the lake since it is kind of windy. That way we don't have to paddle all the way back. Hopefully we can catch a couple more fish to add to our two for dinner. This might be a little aggressive. That's a whole box of noodles in this little pot. We'll see. Might be fun. Come on Skeeter, let's go bury these. Got supper. So here's dinner. I got the two walleye fillets, regular frying pan, and two northern fillets. And those are going to stay skin on. I'm going to cook them on top of the fire grate, skin down. And you're supposed to be able to do that without taking out the Y bones. And just finger eating it. It'll come right off the bone over a low fire. Always wanted to try it. It's never done it that way. So for this pike, I've never done this before, but I think all you do, I'll wash this rock off after and just make some slits. So we'll cook those skin down for a while and see what happens. You should be able to eat this with your fingers. It'll just peel right off the bones. So we have northern right here. Our oil is heating up and then our baked potatoes. We didn't have enough tinfoil to wrap them all the way and throw them in the cold. So we're doing them on top of the grate. I'm sure they'll cook. It'll just take longer. Okay, the fish is off the fire. I'm heating up the beans. We're probably going to have the water boil for a little bit longer. Northern still has a little bit to cook and our potatoes still have a while. So we'll be eating this meal in stages. So the northern got overcooked for sure. It's still pretty good, but it's not exactly flaking off the bones like it's supposed to either. But we'll just finger eat at it and yeah, still tastes good. We'll just have to spit out the bones I guess. This is what you like to see on your day out when you're traveling. Calm waters. We're heading that way. Nice. So this is my first trip using this saw. I'm not sponsored or have any affiliation with them whatsoever, but it's called a Sven Saw. S-V-E-N, collapsible saw. And I love it. You can buy the replacement blades too, which is nice. So I think when I get out of here, I'm going to buy a few of those just to have them on hand. Yeah, it's pretty straightforward. You know, easy setup, easy takedown on like me. So it folds down like this and this makes it way less bulky. It's in a pack really nice. Takes up way less volume than, you know, a bow saw would. There you go. Pretty nice. Pretty easy and sharp. It's a good blade. Well, we're about ready to get packed up. Start breaking down camp. Start the long journey out of here. Should take us three, four hours, I would say. Might fish a little bit along the way. But the trip is still not over, you know, still got a long journey ahead of us here. So hopefully it goes well. Oh, are we ready for this? Are we ready for this, guys? So we're kind of just taking our time getting out of here. Right about here, we're in this little channel where Sierra caught her walleye yesterday. So just paddling really slow, letting her throw her line out, seeing if we can't catch a Walter on the way out of here. Our first portage is right up here. And that brings us into the lake that we camped on a and then a creek. And then we're back at the parking lot. But we're not in any hurry to get out of here. It's such a nice day. I wish the water was just warmer so you could just swim. It looks like you could just swim in it, but it's so cold still. Okay, portage number two on our journey home. I think the trail is somewhere up here. Yeah, it looks like that way. Last portage. Probably hard to tell on camera, but this is pretty uphill and then it's even worse up here. So here this is. Rocky and just straight up this mountain. Skeeter's already on the other side though. Okay, the last paddle. This is the lake that we first came out on. So we have this little lake to paddle across, a little creek, and then a short portage, I guess, to our vehicle. So this trip is just about in the books. Just got to limbo this downed tree. You guys probably remember that on the way in and this is about it. As far as hazards go. Yeah, the water came down a lot while we were in there. Way more shallow. Like 10 more paddle strokes. We're there. Mission accomplished. We made it. Just got a short portage to the car and then it's beer time. Made it back home safe and sound. You know, for a couple people that live full-time off-grid, you'd think that for like a vacation or a trip that we'd go somewhere that has plumbing or something like that, but I guess we do just the opposite. We just head farther out and farther off-grid. Now that we're back, tomorrow's mission, plant our vegetable garden in our raised beds. So stay tuned for that video. Appreciate you guys watching and we will see you soon.