AWESOME PIKE

We received this photo from Paul Dumont form Cincinnati, Oh. It is his 42" Pike caught on 5/25. What a great catch!

GREAT NEW PHOTOS

One of our guests, Tim Abraham, recently returned from his first trip into Quetico Park with his buddy Randy Olson. Tim wrote " While Randy was on the trip to fish and relax, I chose the camera as my fishing pole. I took far too many pictures but it's kind of like casting...you need to do it a lot to catch those few really good ones. He has set up a link with his fantastic picture for us all to enjoy. So when you need a Boundary Waters fix here is a good link to check out. http://abrahamt.jalbum.net/Quetico-Canoe-Trip-2010/

AMERICA'S COOLEST SMALL TOWN

Budget Travel Magazine named Ely it's 2010 "Coolest Small Town in America." In an online balloting, Ely was chosen nearly 119,000 times among almost 440,000 votes cast for cities with fewer than 10,000 people. They started with a list of 147 nominations and whittled it down to 21 for the ballot and released the results Monday. The magazine defined "coolest" not by temperature -though Ely could certainly make a strong case there - but rather a place on the upswing, a place that's beginning to draw attention--and new residents--because of the quality of life and proximity to nature. "And cool doesn't mean quaint. We want towns with an edge, so think avant-garde galleries, not country stores." If you haven't been to Ely come on up and see the "Coolest Small Town in America"

Ready to Start

Today was a big day at our post. It was the long anticipated day of turning on the summer water system. Sometimes this goes very smoothly and some years it takes a few days. Some of you may be familiar with how the system works. In the fall we take a system that is working perfectly fine, drain the water out of all of the pipes and put anti freeze in a few crucial places. Then we are ready for the cold winter to hit. When spring arrives we slowly fill the tanks full of water and let the water start flowing back through all of the pipes that have been sittting all winter. In a perfect world, which rarely happens here, the water flows back in just as it was in the fall. But usually we find a few leaks in pipes along the way that have to be fixed. This year seemed to go pretty smoothly, only a few minor fixes were needed, so now we have water in the buildings. This is great because now you can all come and visit us, join us for meals in the dining room and have a hot shower before or after a good nights rest. So I guess what we are saying is we're open come on in!!

OPEN WATER

Reuben and Melanie Collins couldn't resist the calm water and warm temperature. They paddled around Moose Lake on Sunday afternoon April 4th. This could be the earliest paddling ever.

Spring has reached Moose Lake early this year. The ice went out on April 2nd , making it the earliest that we could find on any records. While much of the country was experiencing cooler than normal temperatures we have been having warmer that normal temperatures. Most of the lakes around the area are open. This has been very exciting for fisherman, because the walleye season doesn't close for another week, so they are able to put their boats in the water and still catch walleye. Those of you that might be looking for an early Spring trip give us a call. Let's start paddling!!

Great Fishing

At the end of May our good customers Michael Friend and buddies had a great time on their trip and shared some of their fishing success pictures with us to pass along to you. Enjoy

Maps

by Melanie Collins

If any of you are like me, you love to look at maps. I love seeing where I've been and looking for places I'd still love to see. This is especially true with the Boundary Waters/Quetico. I've spent many hours staring at the overview maps in our outfitting area and looking for new lakes to visit and new route possibilities to explore. Now I've taken it one step further with one of the coolest free programs on the internet-Google Earth. Google Earth is a free downloadable software that provides satellite images of...well, Earth. To get the program, simply go to http://earth.google.com. You will need to download the program, and then you can pretty much just start playing. Densely populated areas have a much better resolution than small towns like Ely, but there is still an amazing amount of details available of the lakes in the Boundary Waters. One of my favorite tools to play with on the program is the "Path Tool." First I marked Wiliams and Hall Outfitters using the pushpin icon (you can find it by following this link: http://bbs.keyhold.com/ubb/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/390560/an/0/page/0#390560). You may have to zoom out a little bit to get a better idea of the surroundings. Then under the Tools menu, I selected "measure". You now have the option to measure a line or a path. I like to use the path option. You can use the crossbars to draw in any path that you would like and Google Earth will tell you how many miles you've traveled. It is especailly fun to figure out how far you have canoed and portaged on previous trips, as well as a great way to start planning future trips. I'm still a novice at this, but I've had a lot of fun playing around and learning new things. As you get more advanced you will be able to save your own locations - like favorite campsites and fishing spots which can be entered in a GPS system and revisited and add pictures for other users to see exactly what you saw! Last summer I went out for an overnighter with some of my "city friends", and was so excited when a few days after returning my friend Ben sent me a Google Map picture of the lakes we canoed in, documenting our path and the island we stayed on! If you need a little Boundary Waters fix, this is a great way to get it!