2/6/08 – Today is Frank Hansen’s 87th birthday. Happy birthday Frank! His email address is mah@boreal.org if you’d like to send him a greeting.
Shawn Peyton sent the following email and photo this morning:
Greetings Bill and crew,
Was just feeling the winter blues for paddling and reminiscing about last year’s trip, looking through the photographs. We came up in May and put in a day before they closed all the entry points due to the Ham Lake fire. Long story short it was quite an experience seeing that on the horizon for most of the trip. We came up with the plan on going up through the fire lakes, Kelly etc. and then into Brule. Then turning north up to Winchell then back east to the Frost River, south to the Louse River valley then back through Polly, Phoebe route to return to Sawbill. Needless to say we were turned back at the north portage out of Brule by a spray plane diving down over the treeline right above our heads. Perhaps not too bright to get any closer. We reversed directions going up through Cherokee to catch Frost lake and then back on the route planned. I’ll say in all the twelve years I’ve been coming up through Sawbill we’ve never had Cherokee Lake all to ourselves in May. I wish a forest fire hadn’t been the circumstances for that luxury. lol
Anyway, I’m passing along a photo I took on a quiet day on Mesaba Lake as we were looking for a campsite. My two compadres were in a tandem while I was paddling solo and on opposite sides of the point as we debarked to check out this particular site. Deciding against it, I returned to my boat to check out the one across the way. I heard some shouts and as I came around saw something that about made me fall out of my boat laughing. There was Jim and Meg standing on shore and their Prospector paddling off by itself. I paddled over to help out but not before, of course, a couple of photos were taken. Both Jim and Meg have worked in the outdoor industry for years, both have been instructors for Rutabaga’s (Madison) outdoor program, and are amazing paddlers. So it just made it all the funnier. If the photo made it onto your online newsletter it would be wonderful to embarrass them on a public forum in the name of good fun (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). Even experts are prone to those DOH! moments.
I was just having happy memories of the usual good time had every year as we launch out of Sawbill. I had actually just come from a week of backpacking on the Superior Hiking Trail and I really appreciate Kari letting me use the shower before they had been cleaned for the season. I’m sure Jim and Meg when they met up with me appreciated it as well. Hope ya’ll are having a great winter with all the abundant snowfall. Take care.
Shawn