Voyageurs: Bound for Grand Portage, painting

Our kayak instructor was asked about the dimensions of Lake Superior and he put it like this, he said his predecessor, another paddling instructor, decided to kayak around Lake Superior the summer before 

and it took him ninety-three days.  There might not be any particular current to fight, he said, but there is always a wind of some kind, two foot waves can be common, and it's not out of the ordinary to find

three to five footers at sea.  The largest recorded wave on Lake Superior was thirty-one feet, which lapped the bottom of a bridge at Duluth, known to be thirty-one feet in measured height, but those are just the waves we know about, he reminded us.  Over 350 shipwrecks have been recorded on the third largest

body of fresh water (total volume), on the earth.  So cold the lake is annually, that those unfortunate enough to be apart of such wrecks may be fully preserved at the bottom of the lake. Storms are frequent here and come up on you quickly; the old Voyageurs, on their way from the Montreal fur bases to Grand Portage (1,200-mile voyage, six to eight weeks of paddling), could quickly become

An Al Capone Boathouse used for moonshining, a quarter of a mile from Lutsen Resort shoreline

separated from the shore and have to endure a settling fog and rising waves, often paddling blindly, the entire payload in danger, at least one man dedicated to bailing the birchbark canoe bottom with a sponge.  If lucky, or by a good degree of wise foresight, the voyageur might strike a small island or have taken a turn to shore at an inlet and set anchor for the night in the relative safety of the protective rocks.