Maps & Resupply

Our busy summer has started to wind down, and we have been able to meet more regularly to keep chipping away at the preparation tasks for the upcoming trip.

A few weeks ago, we met at a local church to use their kitchen for a “baking day”. We spent several hours chipping away at mixing bulk hot chocolate mix, bannock (which is a type of bread that has been used by paddlers, and fur traders for centuries), and baking Hudson Bay bread (a high calorie granola type bar with various additives for flavor). We quickly got down a system mixing, baking, and packaging these items as they finished. Having the open kitchen was a huge help and really allowed us to organize all the food.

Yesterday, Taylor and I were able to finally lay out all of our maps for our trip on the driveway to make sure we had printed and laminated all the maps we will need for our entire expedition. We have a few separate sets of maps at a few different scales. Some larger bodies of water, we are able to use more zoomed out scaled maps, while more complex portages or rivers we have more zoomed in and detailed versions. All of these maps scaled the length of the drive way a few times. A lot more maps than we were expecting!

We rolled up the maps based on their location and labeled them with their designated resupply location so we can include them with our food/gear at those pick up spots along the route.

In addition to our maps, we acquired some food barrels a while back and now have finally started to finalize the meals that will be going into each barrel for their designated section of the route. The first half of the trip is split pretty consistently with sections of 20-some days between resupply points. The last resupply, we will be geared up for about 45 days of food and gear, much bigger than the others. Because of this, we have to strategically organize the food and their quantities to fit the necessary resupply lengths.

We are meeting next week to continue our food organization, as well as do some canoe repairs before the snow and cold hit too hard here in Minnesota!

Thanks for following along!

Z & J