But for now we want to stay near Ely, Minnesota, for several more days, as we have more kayaking trips planned. We're sleeping good with low temperatures that dip into the mid 40's at night, and we're enjoying day time temperatures in the 70's. So after our lazy rainy day, we were in no hurry to get out on the water until it warmed up some. It was close to noon before we arrived at Hegman Lake.
After filling out our Boundary Water Canoe Area Wilderness day permit, we inflated our kayak. For this trip into the boundary waters, our first step is a quarter-mile portage just to get to the lake. This look like a nice trail in the forest--unless you're carrying a boat and all the gear you need.
This is a slow process when the one at the front of the boat has a bad ankle. We made several rest stops on the way. We were glad to finally catch sight of the South Hegman lake--the light at the end of a tunnel of trees.
We were on the water in a hurry on this beautiful weather day. This paddle has been recommended by our camp host for several reasons. First, it's obviously a beautiful rock-based lake with clear water and great views. With only one other short portage, we found ourselves in North Hegman Lake--a second lake to explore!
Secondly, these lakes have Native American pictographs along one of those grand rock walls. If you look at the very left-hand edge of the picture below, you might see them.
We saw a handful of boats today, and one of them just happened to get to the rock wall at the same time. We exchanged picture-taking duties with them, which includes some trusting as we passed phones across the water between canoes. Have you seen the pictograph yet?
Even though the pictographs were high over our heads, we could see them very clearly.
We are suspicious that these pictographs have been enhanced. Time and weather usually fade this rock art, and we expected them to look more like the plainer pictures we saw at a different place on the same rock.
Not far past the artwork, we entered a narrower channel as we got to the end of North Hegman Lake
That's when we started seeing these interesting plants sticking up among the marshy lake grass.
These are pitcher plants--the carnivorous plants of the boundary waters.
They have two parts--the flower top that woos the innocent bugs into thinking this is just another pretty face.
Right below is the pitcher, with its hairy innards that trap the unsuspecting bug until it drowns. If you're not grossed out enough, we could talk about the digestive juices that will digest all bugs EXCEPT mosquito larva.
Now that we have discovered the pictographs and pitcher plants, we will spend the rest of the day just floating around, to see what other wonders we can find. Past the channel of pitcher plants, we head into our third lake of the day--Trease Lake.
We love finding unexpected rock formations in the middle of the water. Denisa is feeling a little vulnerable when Mark dropped her off on this tiny rock island. She sure hopes he comes back to get her.
From her new vantage point, she can take pictures of Mark and the boat, to show how big these random rocks dumped in the midle of the lake really are.
It takes some good boating skills to wind between the rocks and navigate back close to the rock where Denisa is waiting.
Our big find of the day, however, is blueberries. We've never seen them so close to the water that we could pick them from the boat.
We have learned to carry empty ziplock bags with us just in case we find lots of berries, and today we will need them. The rock faces are too steep to land the boat, but we found a place that Denisa could get out to do some berry picking.
We found some great blueberry bushes today, and they seem to be at their peak of ripeness. After several years of picking berries in different parts of the country, we feel comfortable with our berry identification skills. After all, we haven't died from a bad berry yet!
We recognize that this plant with a beautiful blue berry, is NOT a blueberry. We don't eat this one.
Likewise, these plump red berries might look delicious. But they are not raspberries, and we leave them alone as well.
While Denisa is picking blueberries, Mark is tooling around the lake. These rock walls are grand to our eyes in person, but they're hard to capture with the camera. Mark looks mighty small in the kayak next to those big rock walls.
While Denisa is busy picking berries, Mark's hanging out in the boat taking pictures of flowers sticking straight out of rock walls. The only problem with this strategy is that when you lean way back in the kayak, your sunglasses fall off the back of your hat and fall into the water--never to be seen again. Rats! That was his favorite pair of sunglasses.
Mark takes over berry picking duties the next time we spot blueberries. So now it's Denisa's time to paddle around. We certainly hope she doesn't lose her glasses too!
He's finding a bumper crop, and some of the biggest berries we have seen this year. We see a blueberry crisp in our future!
We've already eaten our picnic lunch, but Mark must still be hungry. While picking blueberries, he almost picked this donut too. Then he remembered that donuts don't grow in the moist forest floor. This was just a donut-shaped mushroom.
As we headed back towards South Hegman Lake, we saw an unusual sight. All of our loon-sightings have been of a lone loon. This evening, we see three together for the first time. As we look closely, it seems that the one on the right has a different color to its beak and head. We are guessing that Mom and Dad (in the rear) are cruising around the lake with their youngster, who hasn't quite matured into his adult coloring.
These are diving birds that can vanish before your eyes and come up 100 yards away. But for some reason, the three of them swam with us as we were heading home. We got this interesting picture of the two adults heading different directions.
Because we got such a late start this morning, the seven hours we have spent paddling stretched our time on the lake into evening. We were hoping that this late hour might bring a moose or bear to the edge of the water. We did see a beaver, but none of the bigger mammals we were looking for. This beautiful blue jay was already in bed for the night.
We're almost back to our original put-in spot when we find another patch of blueberries. They are so close that we can touch them with our oars, but can't quite pick them . . .
until Mark gets out on the watery rock ledge next to the shore. When Denisa starts talking about picking enough berries for a blueberry crisp, Mark is suddenly motivated to find more berries.
We've had a great day on Hegman Lakes. But the whole day we've been dreading carrying the boat a quarter mile back to the car. It is a workout to move it across a flat surface, and the rocky and rooted trail makes it even more challenging. So Mark decided he was ready to try a new technique. He lifted it over his head, and tried carrying it by himself. He liked this better because he could actually see where to place his feet to avoid those big rocks and roots.
Denisa is walking behind, carrying the oars, and the backpack, and anything else we usually carry in the boat. The trip back to the car was so much faster, and we officially found a better portage method! It was a successful day because we also had our best blueberry harvest ever! We washed and sorted them and would have surely made a blueberry crisp this evening. But our weak electric hook-up won't run our convection oven while we are roughing it here. So the blueberries went into bags for future goodies. The first bag is four cups of berries for a crisp, the second bag contains two cups for a blueberry cheesecake, and the third bag is to eat with breakfast cereal. Yum!
We've spent another seven-hour day in the Boundary Waters, enjoying another of God's wonders in the pristine wilderness. We have also taken plenty of pictures of the pitchers and pictographs today!
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