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Closing out our paddling season

Joined
Feb 17, 2015
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Location
Alexandria, Minnesota
The weather has turned unseasonably cold, there is ice on the lakes and we just stored the boats away.
It is time for our paddling season’s summary:
We were fortunate to be able to start our season with a twelve day Spring trip on the Headwaters of the Mississippi River.
Toward the end of the season, we paddled and portaged a ten day loop in the BWCA.
In between, we paddled personal bests for miles and number of different lakes we were on.

Another positive note was that we collected 706 pounds of trash as we paddled.
This was less than half of the amount from last year and, for us, that is very positive.
The water levels where we paddled were up all season.
This should have allowed us to find more trash.
There was just less trash, particularly the common stuff like beverage containers, wrappers, plastic bags, etc.
Styrofoam products still are very prevalent in terms of numbers of pieces.
Hopefully, people are changing there habits after seeing all the news on plastic waste worldwide and this will be a trend for next year.
Thanks
 
I'm going to try and make one more short river trip locally. tomorrow, and I'm guessing that will be it.

Cudos to you for picking up the trash ! Are you able to recycle most of it ?

This year, I was able to spend a week in July with my Grand daughter, (11 yrs old) on Project AWARE, here in Iowa.

It was an awesome experience for the both of us ! 59 miles of river in 5 days. I don't have trash totals, but they too were down because of high water this year !

Thanks for what you did in the BWCA !

Jim
 
Hahaha -20c this morning so our season is over and as been for a while!!
 
Hi Jim,
Thanks for your work on the AWARE.
We are able to recycle a good portion of the trash.
Any usable stuff (beach toys, boat bumpers, PFD’s, etc.) is given away on Craigslist.
The balance is discarded.
We we’re surprised at how much trash we carried out from the BWCA. Most was gear or trash left at portages and less from campsites.
 
Yup, cold up here in the MN northwoods. We are over by Itasca supposedly deer hunting but I seriously can't find my shells so dug the canoe out of the frozen leaf litter & went for a paddle instead. Might just have to misplace my shells every year.

A Big thanks as well for your clean-up work!
 

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Encouraging news about the trash! Thank you for your efforts. Here in New York, I was able to close out the season this week with a four day deer hunt at Little Tupper Lake in the Adirondacks. We'll call it a "deer" hunt but it was more like a "sleep late, read books, sit around the wood stove drinking hot chocolate in my socked feet" hunt.
 

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Good job on the trash pick up, it's also encouraging that you found less trash, a good sign for sure. Thanks for your efforts.

Nice set up you have there David D, it looks lightweight and cozy. and you have a beautiful canoe too.
 
Interesting. We were commenting on the lack of the usual amount of trash on a recent day trip on the local river. I hope it's a trend.

We're in the midst of a warm spell here, but it's about to end. I was out on the lake for some exercise a couple days ago, and the weather was perfect. Maybe too perfect - as it enticed a guy to head out on his fishing SOT, wearing shorts. Even with the coming cooler weather that is predicted to be below average temps, it will be a while yet before I stop paddling here.
 
I think I have one more trip in me. Some folks might remember "Bear", AKA Walter Zaremba, who sadly passed away a number of years ago. He maintained the Thanksgiving Leftovers Trip every year. This year we're going for it, though there aren't many takers. Going to paddle a section of the Connecticut River between NH and VT. So far it looks like it will be just cold enough to snow all weekend. If the forecast turns to rain, I'll probably bail.
 
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