intrepid_camper wrote on Oct 4^th, 2010 at 4:18pm:


IC your training is still embedded in Bernice. Yesterday, I was cutting firewood from a tree that fell in the wind we had and she piled it up for me away from the road. Sewing Tarps and such, Carpenter, Dog Trainer... What else do you do?

Thanks CanoeFly! I didn't know that Preview did anything but annoy me when it opened instead of PShop sometimes.

Is there a program that comes with Windows that will do the same thing and can anyone give easy directions? I tried Paint but... (Worst case you could email it to me.) Cameras come with software too don't they?


Think of the 250K limit as a weight restriction. The average POD ends up at 50K after it's processed. The forums will automatically limit the display size on it's own as the weight limit will still allow images that we'd all have to scroll to see as well as any text on the page.

I find I have better luck shrinking things in the dryer. 

Ben:

Hot water works if they are cotton or wool. Cold water doesn't do much.

This is how it works on my Mac:

Open the pic on your desktop. On the Mac I get a bar across the top called PREVIEW. Go to TOOLS and drag down to "Adjust Image Size" There you can adjust the width or height to a smaller dimension and you'll see the size change with each modification. I think the max. for this site is 250 K. I usually change mine to 5 or 6 inches wide at 72 dpi and that gets it below 250K.

Did you get the prints that I sent?

CanoeFly

I tried to post pics but the files are to big and I'm not sure how to shrink them. I tried putting them in cold water.

Here's the photo

A good time was had by all. These were some of the most grueling portages I've ever seen strung together in the BWCAW. Thank goodness for the steps that the Forest Service must have put in to make it a bit more tolerable. It really reminded me of backpacking in the mountains of West Virginia.

It was a new area to me and I hope to get back to that corner of the Park someday.

See photo attached—Ben on the portage trail

CanoeFly

intrepid_camper wrote on Oct 4^th, 2010 at 9:03pm:


Yep, IC was a trooper on the portages... I expected some whining, but if anyone did it was likely me. Canoefly was amazing on the portaging. I was especially impressed with the stripper he'd built. We were in a pretty good wind the last day and his canoe looked good in the wind. IC had a never ending supply of good snacks... I'm talking healthy like veggie stuff and the like. I got out in time to head out to the Philippines for... well there for three weeks... with traveling and all it was a month. But my canoetrips will be the high light of my year. Thanks IC and CF for getting me and Bernice out one more time.

Our route was through several lakes which were beginning to show the same terrain as further east near the North Shore of Superior.  Precipitous cliffs, ridges between every lake and "mountainous" terrain in comparison to our flatter topography further West in BWCA or northwest in the Q.
My least favorite portage was 160+ rods which took us to an elevation 200 feet higher than the lake we started in, within the first half of the portage. 
But I shouldn't whine...the guys said I must have grown a set of balls to do it and I know I lost a couple sizes in my butt from the way my jeans fit when I got home. 

Note the lake elevations as marked on the maps, that may sort out the uphill and downhill that you speak to on future route planning.

Here's a short re-cap of our Group Solo:

The September group solo trip was interesting.  The two fellows I went with were both very nice guys, and about as far apart as they could be on the spectrum of personalities.  NcountryBen is solid, quiet, deliberate and CanoeFly is very type A and had a hard time sitting down at camp and always out in the lead on travel days.  Ben brought a 4 yr old Chesapeak retriever along which was a very well trained and quiet dog.  She loved to fetch sticks out of the water and they had to be BIG sticks; she just turned her nose up at any stick that wasn't at least 4 feet long and about as thick as your forearm.  By the end of the trip I had her helping bring the firewood up to the fire pit from the canoe when I would go out and find some...if we told her "It's firewood" she would deposit it in a pile, if we told her it was her "stick" she would play with it.  CanoeFly totally fell in love with her.
The weather was overall pretty good.  It only rained on us the first full day out on the water and we were about to make camp anyway so took refuge under my big purple tarp.  We had some cloudy days and many windy days but we lucked out with being in small lakes or on portages on the windy days.  The mornings and evenings were very chilly, especially for CF who had just come from 90 degree weather out East. 
The portages were hard; long distances and lots of steep uphill stretches where the crews had actually built a series of rock steps to scale them.  In general the paths were pretty good and fairly level, not a lot of ankle turning rock in them.  The campsites were beaten BEYOND death with most tent pads just dirt, no grass what-so-ever!
It was surprising that we ran into so many people on the lakes at this later time of year.  However there weren't so many campers that it was a problem finding a campsite.  The larger lakes had many nice campsites and some interesting old lava-flow rocks which erroded at the wave line on shore into small caves just above water level.  We ran into some blow-down areas and a little burnt over area on the trip.
We started at Brule and went west to Cherokee, north to Long Island Lake and east to Winchell, then south back to Brule.  I would recommend going the opposite direction on the loop which would make more of the portages going down hill with a load instead of uphill.
Saw lots of different birds, large and small, maybe migrating considering the flocks.  Saw no large animals but heard a moose one evening.
It was my fifth trip for the year and unfortunately the last till next spring.