:D
Just got back from our week in the Boundary Waters and thought I'd share how my cooler experience turned out.

I packed in an insulated 5 gallon bucket filled with 7 frozen solid bottles of Pawerade, a chunk of sealed cheddar cheese, 12 Hershey bars, and some flatbread.

I covered the bucket with a wet (thin) beach towel to get the evaporative cooling effect and it worked great.  Once at camp, I kept the bucket in the shade with a wet towel over it and 5 days into the trip the Hershey bars and cheddar cheese were still nice and cool.  Maybe hauling in all the weight of the bucket and frozen Powerades is a high price to pay to have some cool cheese and chocolate, but they were bioth nice treats.  I shared most of the Hershety bars with our group of 8 at the end of our longest portage (into Insula) and they were very well received.  We had chili on day 5, and shredded cheddar cheese on it was another good treat.

For the journey back, I threw 5 Powerades into my brother's mesh bag with a few rocks and sent them to the bottom of the lake for the night, so my son and I had cool drinks for the paddle back.

This 5 gallon bucket cooler may seem like dead weight to the die hards out there, but when you spend a week in the boundary waters with 4 adults and 4 kids, in my opinion, it was worth the effort.

Thanks all for your advice.