It’s easy to imagine the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness as a sunny place where things never go wrong and plans fall perfectly into place on every trip. This line of thinking, however, is a recipe for, at the very least disappointment, and perhaps far worse.

The reality of traveling in canoe country is that the weather is often a challenging element of most trips and the best-laid plans don’t materialize the way they were envisioned at home. In this episode of the WTIP Boundary Waters Podcast, host Joe Friedrichs explores this notion firsthand. Joe and Minnesota resident Kevin “The K-man” Kramer share audio recorded during a 2019 summer trip. The duo entered at Brule Lake and found that indeed plans on a BWCA trip don’t always go exactly as they were put down on paper.

Also in this episode, podcaster Matthew Baxley talks with North Shore resident and Boundary Waters enthusiast Chel Anderson. Chel is a botanist and plant ecologist who has lived and worked on the North Shore since 1974. Matthew and Chel talk about a hot topic in the BWCA during the summer months: insects. There’s been no shortage of winged critters spending time at campsites and becoming acquainted with paddlers in the BWCA in 2019.

It’s summer in the Boundary Waters… shared firsthand on this episode of the WTIP Boundary Waters Podcast.