Food Packing Day

This morning every crew arrived bright and early at Cathedral High School to measure and bag all our food for the trip! Each crew chose a dress-up theme to show off our team spirit; we decided on Christmas in June and had a jolly time packing up our meals. Each food item has been double-bagged and sealed in preparation for our trip. In total, we bagged approximately 600 lbs of food! We will bring the first half with us on June 14th, and the other half will be resupplied on Day 12. Afton is also turning 17 today(!!), so we took a quick birthday celebration break with brownies :)We will pack up all our gear next week and be ready to depart in eight days—we are getting so excited for trail!

-Elizabeth

Sewing Day🧵🪡

Here’s Kylie’s take on today:

Today a few of us started the day off at Katie’s house bagging and putting new hamburger on the dehydrator. Then later, around 1 O’clock our crew met at Terry and Linda Loso’s house for sewing day! Linda is an amazing sewer and quilter so she was the perfect fit for helping us! When we arrived she surprised us with beautiful completed paddle bags with our names to store our paddles in. She greeted us all with big hugs and warm smiles! Julia showed us how to sew a ditty bag and her and Linda helped each of us make our own!(so we are all pro sewers now!!) We also made lots of bags for beef jerky and other delicious foods we will be eating on trail.

After all our sewing shenanigans were completed, Terry grilled us some delicious chicken sandwiches and Linda made us broccoli salad, fruit, and veggies. It was so so yummy!! We all enjoyed it on their porch outside as we all cracked up over Terry’s silly jokes (“she swims as good as a rock”🤣) After dinner we enjoyed ice cream and homemade rhubarb cake! We ended the day by taking a picture with Linda and our paddle cases and thanking Terry and Linda for all their help! We missed Pearl and Olivia today but can’t wait for the whole crew to be together next week!

10 Days Prior to Canada

Here’s Lara’s POV from today!

Today we went back to the drawing board with our route planning after hearing about Canada being on fire. We anticipated and agreed on a new route in an area that hasn’t been voyaged on since 2001! We also got to meet our newest member of the crew, Pearl. After portaging and voyaging for a bit, we came back to the meeting room to receive a detailed lesson on compasses and how to use them, from our highly educated and experienced guide, Julia. After solving a jigsaw puzzle (our map) we learned how to measure distances and lengths of lands and waters. We practiced and perfected our p-cord wrapping skills, packing techniques, and paddling strokes on the water. Today we also set a goal to beat Tomczik’s crew from 2022 for the “On Trail Crew Pushup Record”. Our mission is to top 15,601 pushups on trail (light work). We’re excited to explore the lands and paths less traveled over the years!

-Lara

We slacked on the photo taking today but here are a few pics from the girls’ paddle lessons! All 8 girls have found time outside of scheduled meeting times to meet with me to practice their paddling technique - especially steering. I’ve enjoyed getting to know them each on a little more individual level :)

Beef Jerky Day + Baking Day!

Here’s Afton’s recap of the last 2 days:

Beef jerky day was a success with the meat being cut up with no injuries! We had to let the jerky marinate for around 24 hours so we went to let it sit while we got our ingredients for bay bread.

Some of us started the day off by putting beef jerky on the dehydrator!! Hopefully it will taste amazing and perfect on trail!!!

At 9 am we met at Julia’s house and began baking day! It started off great with seeing Elizabeth again after her Alaska trip! We missed her and we are excited to have her back! There were three stations, browning beef, baking bay bread, and mixing our bannock bases for trail! It was a long day with lots of ground beef being cooked, (80 pounds.) There was a lot of variety for the bay bread! The favorite seems to be smores, or any version with marshmallows. I am being biased but I personally think that the fruity pebbles will be fantastic on trail!

Julia, the best guide ever, cooked us lunch to fuel us through the rest of the day. We had tacos with lots of options and talked about the entrance of a new member to our crew! We will be having a new member join our crew! We will be meeting her tomorrow! It is awesome that we will be having a nine person crew so then we won’t have to do any double portages!

As we wrapped up baking and setting all of our food aside, we began clean up. Pretty soon we realized that the frying pans used for the ground beef were very hard to clean. We grinded it out (even if it took an hour to clean two pans.) We swept the floor, cleaned the tables, and dried all of the dishes. It was a great day and we will be prepared with great tasting bay bread on trail!

-Afton

T-minus 2 weeks

Sunday meeting! We learned the remainder of our camp skills including how to set up our tents and tarps, and how to use our stoves. Good practice for Crew Olympics next week where we will put our skills to the test.

We also had to take advantage of a warm afternoon and get out on the water! We learned how to both self-rescue and T-rescue a capsized boat. Had a little fun playing teeter totter too :)

Ended the evening with a meal together at Panera! I love seeing this crew learn & grow together, can’t wait for Canada together! <3

Route planning🗺️

What better way to spend your Memorial Weekend than route planning your trip to Canada! Things are starting to feel real as we are less than 3 weeks away.

We started things off tonight with some goal setting for our trip, incorporating everyone’s ideas to make some big group decisions on our route. We’ve got dreams of crushing the Obukowins and seeing some beautiful waterfalls on the Berens River😍

We paused for a little bit on the maps to do some physical activity. While some girls portaged, the others learned how to pack our kettle pack, and then we rotated. The kettle pack includes many different objects like stoves, pots, utensils, tarps, rope, etc., making it the most difficult to pack. The girls worked in pairs to meticulously pack the items in a specific order.

Back to our maps, we started to lay out day-by-day route ideas that matched up with our goals. We’ll need a few more days of studying the maps to complete this, but we’ve got a really good start!

Food prep begins

Tonight we met at Katie’s house to set up our dehydrator! Thank you to the Reuter family for hosting us at your house :) We set up our work station and went through the expectations for dehydrating. Our first food item is mixed veggies. These girls will work in shifts around the clock to help prepare our food items for packing!

We also did a quick review of our menu and and finalized our decisions. We’re excited for desserts 😋

To end out our meeting, we had a knot competition. 3 different rounds tested the girls on their speed and precision. Birthday girl Kylie was our champion. We had some treats too, to celebrate both Kylie and Katie who recently had birthdays <3

Mega Paddle

Sunday meeting agenda items included knots, menu, & a paddle. I started by teaching some knots that we will use frequently, especially for things like setting up camp or tying up canoes when we pull over for lunch.

Next, the girls took a look at our menu, selecting 26 days worth of deliciously dehydrated food! They decided SPAM was a no.

And finally, we went on a mega paddle with the lovely Far North girls. These girls have been through a trip already so they were able to give some pointers on paddling technique as well as general advice about trail. It was lots of fun to see so many canoes out and exciting that basecamp is getting busy!

A beautiful evening at basecamp!!

Did this weekend feel like summer or what??!

The crew got together again this Sunday. As promised, we started with a lovely portage to the tennis courts and back. Light work 😮‍💨

We then broke out a set of maps to learn how to piece them together. I pretty much handed the girls a stack of maps and said go. They pieced the puzzle together and we took a look at the area where we’re heading! I explained how UTMs work and pointed out some major rivers and landmarks so we can start thinking of route ideas.

Before we got too much further, I wanted to talk about our crew expectations and goals so we were all on the same page. We wrote down some ideas of what a voyageur looks like and specifically what we want our crew to look like. Lots of good ideas!!

And because I could not pass up the opportunity to get on the water, we went on our first paddle! Calm water on an absolutely gorgeous evening, what more could you ask for?? While we will still need many days of practice working on our paddle strokes, it was a great start and got us excited to spend the summer in canoes. See ya next time<3

First meeting!

This past weekend our crew got together for the first time!! It was so fun to meet the group and start to imagine what our summer will look like. 🛶🌲🌅

I came home from college for the weekend and we were lucky to have a crew member travel from out-of-state to be here, so we crammed A LOT into just 2 hours to make the most of it. After meeting at my house and introducing everyone, we carpooled to basecamp and I showed the girls around a little bit. They’ll be spending lots of time here this summer practicing their skills and getting gear & food ready to go.

Then we jumped right in and got the canoes out. I explained how the canoes are our lifeline on our trip so we must treat them as such. Learning how to portage might arguably be the hardest skill of them all - a 75 lb canoe - and you must flip it above your head and carry on your shoulders!! 🤯 But the girls crushed it and are going to be pros in no time. They all successfully learned how to flip it on to their shoulders and next time we are going to portage them to the tennis courts (who’s excited for next time??!).

I quickly walked them through the packing list as well so they can slowly start to get their gear together before June. While I could’ve kept them at basecamp all day learning new things (I just get so excited), we wrapped things up so everyone could have a break before the LVI parent meeting! Super busy day but our next meeting likely won’t be until May, so it was awesome to get a really good start on some things!!

So good to meet everyone. Thankful for such beautiful weather too!

-JJ

Hello family & friends!

Welcome to the Johnson Crew blog page. Check here for updates on all things trip prep!

I’m Julia Johnson, your guide for this summer. A little bit about me - I graduated from Sartell High School in ’21, which is the same year I did my first Voyageurs trip. I did a Far North trip the year after, and then guided for the first time last year. Loved it so much and now I am back for more :D

I’m currently 21 and in nursing school in Eau Claire, WI. I’ll graduate with my BSN this December! I love all things active, whether it’s traveling, running, or camping.

I am super excited for these girls and what’s to come, can’t wait to get going on prep work soon!