This year will be 33 years for my wife and me. She introduced me to the Boundary Waters area after doing trips there as a teenager. I'll always be thankful to her for that because it has provided us with a lifetime of great vacations, a bunch of new canoeing friends and many great memories.
I remember the first night in we endured a hellacious thunderstorm followed by hordes of mosquitoes in the still humid air that followed. Our rented canvas tent had so many leaks and rips it could hardly be called a shelter from either the rain or bugs and it had no floor! But we endured the first awful night to wake up to the same swarm of mosquitoes that we fled before having breakfast. We paddled till the sun was well above the horizon and then stopped on a breezy bug free point to have brunch. I was eager to break out the fishing gear and while Dede prepared our food I assembled a fishing rod rigged with a #5 Mepps spinner. I remember making 4 casts in a row from that point and catching a fish each time. I was hooked for life.
The following year we spent (invested) all of our savings at that time on brand new gear including a canvas Eureka Timberline tent, an Old Town canoe and the first bent shaft paddles I had ever seen. It's been a good and adventurous three decades. Congrats Old Salt on 4 decades.