Type:	Brown Bag Lunch Seminars
Skill:	Beginner Tour
Age:	16 and Older

This tour is designed to teach you how to paddle and portage at the Bittersweet State Natural Area, a sort of "baby Boundary Waters," consisting of four lakes connected by short portages. If you've always wanted to go to the BWCA but were unsure "how it works," you'll learn on this tour.

This trip is an all-day trip, and is limited to canoes with yokes, whether they're integrated into the canoe or are removable (like in the case of most solo canoes). No kayaks on this tour, please.

We will carry our canoes in from a parking area into Prong Lake, them portage into Bittersweet Lake, then into Smith Lake and finally into Oberlin Lake. There will be a break at Oberlin, with some cooking demonstrations to supplement lunch.

This trip has a bonus: it's has amazing aquatic plant life, with such unusual plants as seven-angle pipewort, watershield, bur-reeds, golden pert, quillworts, water lobelia and waterweed. Northwest of Smith Lake and west of Oberlin Lake is an old-growth forest remnant of hemlock and yellow birch; a black spruce-tamarack bog is located west of Smith Lake.

If you want to come back, you can reserve one of several paddle-in-only campsites. Another great way to practice canoe tripping skills!