This loop begins near the town of Floodwood. From here, we paddled up the Whiteface River to the Whiteface Reservoir and then portaged into the Saint Louis River and paddled back to Floodwood. Erik, my husband, found this route on the map. It can be difficult to combine loops when paddling rivers, but this lookedContinue reading “The Great Northeast Minnesota River Loop”
Category Archives: Paddling
Backpacking and Packrafting Gates of the Arctic National Park
Alaska has been on my radar since I learned the place existed. It’s larger than life and has mountains. But it’s huge with infinite places to explore. In 2015 I saw photos from Gates of the Arctic National Park and decided we had to go there. After much planning and changing our itinerary, we eventuallyContinue reading “Backpacking and Packrafting Gates of the Arctic National Park”
Canoeing Minnesota’s Rum River
Over the long Memorial Day weekend of 2016, (taking Friday off from work) my husband, Erik, and I paddled the 154 mile Rum River. Erik’s parents, Barb and Steve, helped us with a shuttle. The Rum has a special meaning to me because when I was a kid, we had a cabin on the riverContinue reading “Canoeing Minnesota’s Rum River”
Canoeing the Minnesota-Ontario Border
In 2014, Erik decided this should be the trip. I wasn’t super stoked because (1) there aren’t any mountains on the route and (2) it would involve lots of camping, and at the time I felt quite adverse to spending several nights in a row in a tent. In the end, Erik didn’t have toContinue reading “Canoeing the Minnesota-Ontario Border”
Kayaking the Slate Islands and Backpacking the Sleeping Giant
I learned about Slate Islands Provincial Park from my father-in-law. This archipelago extends into Lake Superior off the “real north shore” of Ontario. There are 15 islands total that were formed when a meteorite impact left a crater and the surrounding land rose up out of Lake Superior. There are woodland caribou here and myContinue reading “Kayaking the Slate Islands and Backpacking the Sleeping Giant”
The Northern Forest Canoe Trail: 700 Miles from Old Forge, New York to Fort Kent, Maine
Around 2007, back when Erik and I were dating, we loved going to the Midwest Mountaineering Outdoor Adventure Expo and there we learned about the Northern Forest Canoe Trail (NFCT). A few years later, after doing Minnesota’s Savanna Portage (link is to my book where that story resides) and our “canoe to the ocean trip-”Continue reading “The Northern Forest Canoe Trail: 700 Miles from Old Forge, New York to Fort Kent, Maine”
Elspeth Ronnander 