Monday, March 11, 2013

The End

Well, this is it folks.  After an extended break from blogging during my trip and being back, I've come to the realization that it is now more work then fun and a good time to call it quits.  Life is just too busy at the present time.  But maybe again in the future.  Who knows?

Keep calm

It's been fun!

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Winter Camping Part 1

I will just get it out of the way- if you are a wuss, don't winter camp.

There, that pretty much sums it up.  Probably the best way to show this is with lots of pictures and minimal words.  In a nutshell, I pulled a 50 pound sled through Northern Minnesota and up into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.   Way back in where the lake we were on was half US and half Canadian.  We then spent 3 nights and 3 days trying to stay warm.  Temperatures ranged from -15 degrees (seriously) to about 25.

The goal was fishing, but they didn't want to bite so we spent all day, every day, out on the ice chatting it up and contemplating whether we would walk across to Canada.  We didn't do it because the snow was so thick and it would have been a lot of work.  Actually, we really had a lot of fun, and the only time we were ever cold was climbing out of our two sleeping bags a piece, and changing clothes for the day. That part actually sucked because the head area of our sleeping bag from breathing in the super cold nights was frozen and had frost all over it.   Our hands were cold the most because they would start to freeze in the really cold weather and we had to take breaks from putting our clothes on and warm them up before we could tie boots and zip jackets.  Essentially we would do one thing, warm the hands, do another, warm the hands and then finally put our gloves on.

Here comes the pics:

Me in front of Lake Superior.  I had no idea it didn't freeze near the shore for most of the lake.



Lake Superior


Giant tree roots


From this point the lake is about 800 ft. down, we had crazy switchbacks and rigged up a pulley system to get down a hill that was more than 45 degrees.




This is the hill that was at about 35 degrees or so.  You can't tell how steep it is because of how far away the top is.  We would hook up a person to one end of the rope and the sled to the other and through a pulley, and then the person would run down the hill and the sled would go up.


Home base.  Doesn't it look cozy and warm?


If this picture doesn't scream fun then I don't know what does.  (Please catch the sarcasm!)


All bundled up


Gorgeous purple sunset

Chris in the distance blazing a trail.


And I'll leave you with the best part- a spam and macaroni eating movie



Monday, March 4, 2013

I'm Alive

We made it out.

I'm sore and sunburned and promise to post about it.

Tomorrow.

PS:  It was -15 degrees Friday night and I was sleeping in a tent.

Friday, March 1, 2013

My new mantra:

Camping meal and dessert Ideas!
Only instead of rain drops falling in the picture, imagine feet and feet of snow


Guess what we're eating at some point on this trip?

Food of champions

Actually, to be fair, it does taste pretty good fried up and eaten like a hamburger with tomatoes and lettuce and mayo.  But then mayo makes just about everything taste better.

We're eating our spam with instant macaroni and cheese.  I am told by Chris that pretty much whatever we eat out there will taste amazing.  I won't go into too many details on the fact that that's probably because we're trying so hard to stay warm all day long....

Hope I'm still alive!  But seeing my winter survival test results were below 50%, and the fact that Chris had us redo our wills since the last three babies weren't in it (oops), plus the fact that he wanted us to bring a picture of the kids "just in case we were dying and wanted to look at them", who knows.  For real.  He really said that.

And on that note, here's some blogs for you to check out, since I'm not around to read them.
Hopefully not literally not around!!