Our first post from the USA. One week in and, oh my goodness, what a week! We've had hot sun, torrential rain, thunder, lightning, hail and wind. We've sipped bloody mary on a sunny boat cruise, ridden bikes along the banks of the Mississippi, sheltered under dripping fir trees as the rain funnelled down inside our clothes, canoed through a hail storm and had our first encounter with the dreaded "mosquitoes of the north". And we've loved every minute of it!
 |
| Cindy's famous Bloody Mary On A Boat |
Our warm-up for the road ahead has been a trip with our friends Al and Cindy up into the Boundary Waters of Minnesota - a fabulous (and, to the rest of the world, largely unknown) wilderness area of lakes and forests stretching all the way up to the Hudson Bay. You get into your canoe and paddle from lake to idyllic lake, pausing briefly to "portage" your canoe and kit between lakes, find yourself a campsite, settle in. And then you fish. Bass, trout, perch and, if you're lucky (we weren't!), the local specialty walleye. No crocodiles, no hippos and no hyenas (although it turns out the bears of North America can be at least as troublesome as hyenas - we had to suspend our food at night from a tree to keep it safe). Paradise! We did get fairly severely rained on but, hey, that all adds to the experience. In order to truly appreciate the sun, you have to first experience the rain!
 |
| Canoeing in the rain - welcome to the northern hemisphere! |
 |
| Lifting our food away from the bears |
It's been a fantastic introduction to the North American continent, although the learning curve is steep. A chastening reminder that you can't afford to have shabby, un-weatherproof kit in this part of the world, and a note to self to revise my long forgotten lighting-fires-from-wet-firewood skills. Tonight we fly to Seattle, where we'll pick up our vehicle, go shopping for some properly rainproof clothing (from the second-hand clothing store, naturally!) and then point ourselves north towards the wilds of British Columbia.
 |
| Max meets a smore |
 |
| Our first catch in North American waters |
 |
| Portaging our canoes from lake to lake |
currentVote
noRating
noWeight
No comments:
Post a Comment