Thanks for visiting. After Using trailjournals to record my AT hike last summer I have decided to use it again on this trip. Hannah Williams and I will be circumnavigating Lake Superior in our sea kayaks during the summer of 2009. You can learn more about the trip at www.asuperioradventure.com. We are still in the planning stages so things are still in flux but it looks like we are leaving out of Houghton on June 11th. Check back for updates and to follow my journal as we paddle.

It takes three journal entries to make your journal active on here so I figured I would add two more quick ones just to get the ball rolling. I guess, like my AT journal, I will write an entry about why I am taking this trip.

I finished the AT on July 7th, 2008 after 106 days on trail with only 6 rest days. My feet were pretty messed up. When I got back to Michigan I was having a hard time walking and going back to work was tough. At the beginning of August I went to Isle Royale for a few weeks to guide an Earthwatch expedition doing wolf and moose research for Rolf Peterson (www.isleroyalewolf.org) and do some hiking with my brother. I had a lot on my mind, including my impending departure for Peace Corps, and found the island a great place to think. I realized it wasn’t the time for Peace Corps and that I wanted to give my relationship with Hannah a chance. I also realized I wanted to do another large adventure. My foot pain deepened and I ended up cutting my trip with my brother short and leaving the island early. I had decided to put my Peace Corps application on hold and had settled on another trip I wanted to take. Since I could barely walk a hiking trip was out. That limited my adventure options. I love the Lake and being smack in the middle of its beauty made me realize I wanted to see the rest of it. I got home, propositioned Hannah with the idea and the ball was rolling. Now we are months into the planning and well on our way. We have picked a start date, thanks to a random day picked by our friend Aaron. We paddle out of town on June 11th.

I guess I started this journal and told people why I am taking a trip I never really explained what the trip is. So I suppose I should do that now.

On June 11th my girl friend, Hannah Williams, and I will be paddling out of Houghton, Michigan in a three month trip around Lake Superior. We are heading west out of town, through the Portage Canal and onto the big lake; paddling clockwise around the lake. We have to be back into Houghton by the beginning of September so Hannah can get back to school at Michigan Tech. We intend on paddling out to Isle Royale National Park when we get up by the Minnesota/Canada border. Planning is going well, although it is more difficult than planning my AT hike because the wealth of information available for that trip is not available for this one. We are mail dropping food in a few spots due to the remoteness of the Canadian north shore. Neither of us are particularly well seasoned paddlers so we are learning about kayak touring as we go. Our website is coming together and I want to encourage people to check it out. You can access the journal Hannah is writing there. Please sign my guest book or drop me an email if you have any information about spots on the lake or just want to share a comment, I love hearing from people.

I will update the journal on and off before we leave and will hopefully have entries for every day I am out, although it will updated sporadically due to the limited computer access on the trip. Thanks for reading and I hope it’s interesting enough to bring you back and get you to follow along.

Things are moving along smoothly with the planning stages of this adventure. Hannah bought her boat the other day at Down Wind Sports in Houghton. It is an Impex Force 3. It is a little longer and quite a bit narrower than my P&H so it should be faster and help make up the power differance between us. Buying that was the keystone of our preperation. Our gear is almost complete, just need some dry bags a few little things.

The website is coming along well. There are still some things we need to put on it but we are getting a good amount of traffic. I encourage you to check it out if you haven’t and check again if you have. www.asuperioradventure.com.

The details of the trip are grinding slowly forward. We have some maps ready, and are getting our food down. We decided on a combo of mail drops and buying food along the way so we have some dehydrating to do and lots of meal planning. Sometimes it feels like we have tons to do and others that we are almost done. We have 5 months which feels like both eternity and no time at all. It is an odd dynamic planning this type of thing. The excitement is growing constantly.

Hannah is back in class after the holidays and I am back to working in a regular fashion. It is nice to have some structure but I enjoy the freedom so it is a tough trade off. Feel free to drop me a line either through the guest book here or by the contact info on our website. Also check out Hannah’s journal at www.trailjournals.com/hannahwilliamscircumnav

This weird warm spell we have been having in the UP has pretty shot winter. The snow is to warm and wet and slow to ski, the ice is melting so climbing out, the snow is really heavy so snowshoeing isn’t much fun. But one good thing did come of it. The wind turned around and blew out of the south for a few days and cleared the bay of ice. Open water can mean only thing. Paddling. We put the rack back on the truck, loaded the boats and headed out. We couldn’t find a spot to put in where there was open water so we just parked in front of someones summer home and ran the boats through their yard to the lake. We launched in the icy (literally) water and paddled under the cliffs for about an hour. It was nice to test some of my gear in weather much colder than we will see on the actual trip. The water was as cold as it gets and the air temp was around 36. Getting out got me so excited to paddle. I can’t wait. I know it was just a fluke but now I want to be out everyday. A few more months.

We are still months from departure and things are already picking up steam. We have gotten in the water a few times in the past week or so. Some trips were good, some not so much but time in the water is well spent.

We got our first corporate sponsor this week. Aquapac has committed some gear to us which is awesome. Waterproofing is obviously one of the key concerns on a trip like this. We are taking a lot of camera gear and electronics (vhf radio, cell phone, iPod for photo storage) and we were very nervous about those items and water. Well we aren’t nervous anymore. Aquapac makes some of the best drycases for electronics on the market and we are so excited to get involved with them. They make camera cases you can shoot through, so we can take photos from our boats without ever exposing the cameras to the elements. Apparently, although I haven’t tried yet, you can even shoot underwater! You should definitely check them out at www.aquapac.net and if you are the kind of person who does this kind of stuff, send them an email and thank them for sponsoring adventure athletes. Their support makes a world of difference.

In other news, We got on the news. The local TV news came and did a preliminary story on the trip. It was pretty awkward talking to a camera but Hannah and I survived. They looked at some of our gear and talked about the Lake’s ecology. When the story ran it looked pretty good. They got all the information correct but we came off looking pretty inexperienced. The longest kayak trip I have taken is really only about 15 miles. That isn’t to say I haven’t paddled quite a bit but it sounds pretty weak in light of the adventure we are planning. They made it sound like I have never done anything except little day kayak trips. I have a lot more. This trip is a lot of paddling but it is also a lot of camping night after night, something I am very good at. But, Oh well. If you are interested you can see the story on their website at www.uppermichiganssource.com.

Things are going pretty well in the planning process for this trip. We have been busy dehydrating food and looking at maps and all the good stuff you have to do before a trip of this stature.

We have gotten a few more sponsors for the trip. I really want to thank Granite Gear and Headsweats for their support. Without the help of these companies, and our other sponsor Aquapac, we would have a much harder time even getting in the water.

We have done a little promotion of the trip, on radio and the web and gotten a press release out about the trip. Things are going well around Houghton. The weather has finally started to turn and spring is at least teasing it’s way into our lives. The sun has been shining and it is really warm, comparatively. We have been hanging out outside a lot, walking the dog and sitting on the porch. I have gotten my fixed gear bike project on the road and have been having fun playing with that.

All our gear and plans are falling into line and things are really coming together. I went to the post office and have my passport on its way so I will be able to get back into the U.S. We just have a few more pieces of equipment to pick up and some final plans to get in order and months to do it in.

It is interesting looking back to a year ago at this time. I was about to leave on my AT hike. All the excitement and anticipation. A lot has changed and gone on this year. I am still really excited and filled with anticipation but the trip has changed dramatically. If you are reading this and heading out on a long trail this year, as it is that time, good luck and have fun.

The excitement of the past few weeks has been ridiculous.

Summer field season at work has started gearing up so work is getting busier. The weather has been great, lots of sunshine and a few days where the wind died and we could get our boats in the water for some awesome springtime paddling. We have been biking a lot, walking around town with the dog. Hannah only has a week of school left but final exams have been weighing heavy on her time.

Granite Gear sent us all the dry bags we need for the trip. They are perfect. They make some of the nicest bags out there and we are really excited to use them. We also have the privelage of getting Badger Balm.com involved in the trip. We love their lip balms and are really happy to have their bug repellent for the swarms of biting insects that inhabit these north woods. We also are using their sore muscle balm for after those long days in the boats. Things are going really well with the planning. We have almost everything we need. We just have to get a pelican case for one of our cameras and we should be all set. It is only about 6 weeks until we take off so it feels good to have most of the prep work done. The excitement us really building. You can see all our sponsors and details on our site (I know, another shameless plug, but I just really want people to see the site I made) at www.asuperioradventure.com

In other news Hannah and I purchased a house yesterday. We have been talking about where we are living next year and we came across a house in Calumet, north of Houghton, for a price easily in our budget. We looked at it yesterday and put down a deposit. The place cost 5,000 dollars, has a roof, a solid foundation and 4 walls so we could hardly turn it down. It is definitely a fixer upper but that sounds fun to us right now. Life is really exciting and we have tons to do now, probably too much, but it makes things interesting.

Summer is kind of here and things are getting crazy. I say “kind of” because we got about a foot of snow last week.

First I have to thank Bryan Hansel for his help with maps. He compiled maps for our entire circumnavigation. They look great and will be much easier to use than the maps I have. Bryan has his own little adventure planned for the summer, one that makes ours look a little weak. He is not only circumnaving the Big Lake, but doing all of the Great Lakes. It is pretty amazing and I am really excited for him. You should defintely check out his site at www.aroundthegreatlakes.com He is great guy and is taking on an awesome adventure.

Hannah and I have been out on the Lake as often as weather and schedules permit. My work is getting busy and Hannah has finals this week so things are busy. I can’t wait to paddle out of here and bet back to a much simpler lifestyle. We gave a presentation for Earth Day last Wednesday at Conserve School, an environmentally focused high school in Land O Lakes Wisconsin. Hannah graduated from there and they invited us back to talk about enjoying the outdoors in your own back yard. The sideshow went well but it is tough to talk about a trip we haven’t taken yet. We lacked all the fun anecdotes and great pictures that make presentations good.But it was fun all the same.

In non-paddling related news Hannah and I have been working a lot on the house we bought last weekend. Buying the house was probably not the best timing with our impending adventure requiring most of our focus but we couldn’t say no. It is only a 5,000 dollar house so it needs some work but the price was unbeatable so we went for it. We have spent a lot of time cleaning and working. It has added a huge amount of stress and taken our thoughts away fro the trip a bit but it all seems to be working out. Hope everyone is enjoying the approaching summer.

Just over a week left until departure day. This past month has been ridiculous. Hannah and I have been super busy trying to get all of the details shaken out with our house, which has been a lot more work and stress than I was hoping for, working and getting the final prep ready for the summer. We have been running around 18 hours a day, 7 days a week with almost no respite. We have been barely able to get on the water. But all this is just about over. It’s my last day at work and we have everything packed and ready to go. We are heading down to Rochester to spend a week with Hannah’s parents before my folks bring us back north so we can paddle off.

We had dinner with Bryan Hansel the other night when he was passing through the Keweenaw. He was attempting to paddle all 5 of the great lakes but was having some problems with injuries and gear and was dealing with the rough weather of spring. His website this morning announced that he is abandoning his attempt because his injuries won’t subside. This a real bummer and I hope Bryan heals up quick. He was a great guy to sit around and talk with and was on a great adventure. I am sure he is disappointed, how could you not be, but there are plenty more opportunities to finish that adventure and it’s better not to do long term damage. Hannah and I are hoping to stop in and see Bryan and Illena when we are up near their home in Grand Marais, MN.

This might be my last prep entry before we head out on the Lake. I may get another in right before we take off but we will see. Like always, check out the website and you can start checking back more frequently if you like, we should start getting some updates from the water soon.

Hope everyone is enjoying the summer.