quote eagle93: "A purple thong, hanging on a bush next to one of the tent pads. Burned it."

quote alpine525: "We found two very unusual things near the overlook at Stairway Portage (Rose Lake).


The first was an unopened can of hamburger patties in gravy. My guess would be it was from the 1970's. It was in stuck deep in a hole at the bottom of a tree.


The second item, also from the same area, was a "weight" from an old fashioned window casing. It must have weighed a pound or two. It was about 8" long and was made of iron or a similar material.


We found these items before we had a digital camera - so no show and tell for now!"

quote eagle93: "A purple thong, hanging on a bush next to one of the tent pads. Burned it."

quote Swampblaze10: "Five minutes after we pulled into the campsite on Insula, standing next to the large rock near the shoreline..a yellow & white live bait bucket comes flying around the point thru the 2 foot cut. I grab it right out of the water by the rope it was trailing. I look around the corner..no one there. Before I get the chance to open it to see what's inside...another one comes shooting around the corner. 2 bait buckets chock full of leeches at the end of the first day of travel. Not a soul around anywhere...used those leeches all week. "

quote analyzer: "two things come to mind:


1. I found a walleye skeleton, completely clean, except the tail was missing. It was approximately 10 lbs. What made it interesting was the metal stringer attached to the jaw, and a couple links of chain. I left it there, but often wish I had taken it home and mounted it on a piece of wood, with the caption: "The one that got away".


2. My B.I.L found a large truck tire on the bottom of the lake near where Sag meets 1st bay. I assume it was from loggers back in the day, but it was strange to see on the bottom; if not wholly disappointing. It only takes one to wake you up and realize you're NOT really that remote from civilization."

quote kanoes: "

quote eagle93: "A purple thong, hanging on a bush next to one of the tent pads. Burned it."

i wanted that back. :("

quote Swampblaze10: "Five minutes after we pulled into the campsite on Insula, standing next to the large rock near the shoreline..a yellow & white live bait bucket comes flying around the point thru the 2 foot cut. "

quote vickieh69: "Boy Scout knife in the roots of a tree at the narrows campsite on Cherry. (2010) "

quote kanoes: "

quote eagle93: "A purple thong, hanging on a bush next to one of the tent pads. Burned it."

i wanted that back. :("

quote JackpineJim: "Back in the mid '80s, early May, we found a perfect, and I mean PERFECT, bat skeleton in on the landing of Smite Lake portage to Beaver Lake. It was laid out on its back with wing bones spread as if it were on display in a museum. Kind of creepy wondering how it came to be so perfectly placed. "

quote Kevlar: "Banana, I found something similar on a lakeshore on the Lady Chain. Can't remember exactly which lake, but I hiked along shore from our camp and looked into a deep crevice and found a complete tent, ruined by age, and a rotting small pack with hatchet, saw, rope, and rotting tarp in it. Somebody must have stashed the stuff, thinking they'd make a return trip without carrying so much stuff, and never did.


On the English River, north of the Q, we found the old voyageur footpath portage trail around a rapids. It was a 6" deep groove about 12" wide, and had trees almost 18" in diameter growing out of it. This portage bypassed one rapids, and the newer portage bypassed about five.
Told this to an older gentleman who repaired tents and packs, and he went into the back room and came out with a pair of original voyageur paddles that he had found on a Canadian portage. He said he'd had them authenticated by a museum. They were about 5.5' long, the blade long but only about 4 to 4.5" wide, made from one piece of wood, and very weathered and a little gnawed.


We also found a diary left on a Crooked Lake campsite. We read the whole thing. A guy leading a Christian Camp was in love with the other leader, but the young woman basically ignored him. Oh woe and despair! The kids added several days worth of entries where he describes how he kills her and hides the body, then they search for her, can't find her, and he contemplates his own suicide. And then they left it on the next campsite."

quote NoahDaBoa: "canoearoo - that stinks. Weed? Group of 20 - somethings? What kind of stuff did you find?"

quote tumblehome: "**The best place to find stuff now is behind campsites after the forest fires since it is now out in the open. The amount of junk and stashed stuff is unbelievable. My list is too long to tell here.


Tom"

quote NoahDaBoa: "

quote analyzer: "two things come to mind:



1. I found a walleye skeleton, completely clean, except the tail was missing. It was approximately 10 lbs. What made it interesting was the metal stringer attached to the jaw, and a couple links of chain. I left it there, but often wish I had taken it home and mounted it on a piece of wood, with the caption: "The one that got away".



2. My B.I.L found a large truck tire on the bottom of the lake near where Sag meets 1st bay. I assume it was from loggers back in the day, but it was strange to see on the bottom; if not wholly disappointing. It only takes one to wake you up and realize you're NOT really that remote from civilization."

Analyzer, that's freakin awesome about the walleye skeleton. It's strange that somebody would leave a good catch there with the stringer too.


Funky, about the tire... and yeah I hate it when you finally feel like you're away from it all, and then you spot something like a tire or glass bottle..."

quote Canoearoo: "

quote NoahDaBoa: "canoearoo - that stinks. Weed? Group of 20 - somethings? What kind of stuff did you find?"

it was a glass bulb thing with a long neck. They burned the bottom of this thing and cooked stuff inside of it. There were other things, I combined them all and threw them in the lake.


2 days later while we were heading north on a slow moving river we came across 2 obviously waisted older teenagers who were out of their canoe (in the middle of the river)high as birds. They were walking/swimming/falling their canoe back to the lake where they left there 'stuff'. They were a good hour of canoeing till they reached the portage. Walking/swimming/falling down was going to take them a LONG time to get back."

quote Longpaddler: "totally intact (I think) moose skeleton complete w/ skull. "

quote tumblehome: "I'll chime in.


We 'found' a full 70 pound food pack at a portage landing once. Left it there. Poor folks...


Found several torn up food packs in the woods behind a campsite on Alton. Some bear was smart since he had taken more than one pack.


Found old cone top beer cans in a junk pile at a site on Lac LaCroix. Actually found many old beer cans over the years. Mostly flat tops, Hamms in fact.


Found a very old can of bug spray in a junk pile on Clove lake. The can said "NOW WITH DDT" I wish I had kept that one.


Found a message cache with messages going back to 1976 and only 20 entries since then. I can't say where that one is. Sorry.


**The best place to find stuff now is behind campsites after the forest fires since it is now out in the open. The amount of junk and stashed stuff is unbelievable. My list is too long to tell here.


Tom"

quote Longpaddler: "totally intact (I think) moose skeleton complete w/ skull. "

quote tumblehome: "Hi Noah,


The south shore of Winchell did burn but that was in 1990's. It's too grown up now to find anything. You need to go to more recent burns. The Pagami Creek fire would be a good start. I bet the campsites on the numbered lakes (One, Two) and Insula are loaded with relics. "

quote NoahDaBoa: " We all know the feeling of finding something interesting on the ground, whether it be a baggy of coke found on a trip to D.C. or a lost cell-phone on an overgrown hunting trail.

So, what is the most interesting thing you have found in the Boundary Waters? It should be something man-made and small, so no lost cabins, abandoned tracks, etc. Let me know!"

quote WhiteWolf: "a nice Gränsfors Bruks hatchet/axe on Fourtown. How someone can leave behind such a fine tool is beyond me. I have been using it inside my house next to wood burner to make kindling for the past 7 years. Hardly ever needs to be sharpened with careful use.-- the edge is unreal. I do a "touch up" every fall,, but the metal on this piece is far superior to other "axes/hatchets" out there. Like a quality fillet knife or butcher knife. "

quote 1lookout: "I have an educated answer,it was Benny Ambrose.
I'm sure in all his years, he drove to First Bay.
But he also had, a tentcamp, which I will not disclose
in the bay. Also/or some other characters on Sag also
spent a lot of time in that area. what they did in the
old days are history that unfornutely may never be told.


I feel honored I met them!!"

quote TuscaroraBorealis: "

quote 1lookout: "I have an educated answer,it was Benny Ambrose.
I'm sure in all his years, he drove to First Bay.
But he also had, a tentcamp, which I will not disclose
in the bay. Also/or some other characters on Sag also
spent a lot of time in that area. what they did in the
old days are history that unfornutely may never be told.



I feel honored I met them!!"

Forgive me. But, who's post are you commenting on?"

quote Speckled: "I found a film container on the island river, opened it to find a fodled up piece of tinfoil, unfolded it to find a few small tabs of paper (hits of acid).


Have found a ton of other "usual" stuff. The acid was the most unusual."

quote NoahDaBoa: "I use google maps sattellite to check out fire areas but it was last updated in '11 before the fire. Funky."

quote eagle93: "A purple thong, hanging on a bush next to one of the tent pads. Burned it."

quote mr.barley: "I stopped to take a leak on a small (about 20 in diameter) island near Lady Boot Bay and found an entire loon skeleton."

quote RainGearRight: "

quote Speckled: "I found a film container on the island river, opened it to find a fodled up piece of tinfoil, unfolded it to find a few small tabs of paper (hits of acid).

Have found a ton of other "usual" stuff. The acid was the most unusual."

was it any good?"

quote 1lookout: "Sorry I caused some confusion, I was commenting someone found a tire
on first bay of Sag.
My guess my old friend Benny Ambrose. Too bad we don't have the tire, but Benny used to park his truck at my place.


"

quote Mocha: " old wooden latrine, campsite on kawishiwi river, 2009"

quote Mocha: "maybe it climbed in their stay warm or someone had thrown (throne) food away> that's sad. assuming it was dead?"

quote eagle93: "A purple thong, hanging on a bush next to one of the tent pads. Burned it."

quote jwartman59: "nov of 2014 i found an aluminum canoe stashed in the woods at angleworm lake. there was a note attached by a ranger stating that the canoe would be confiscated if left past a certain date. apparently someone didn't feel that the canoe was worth hauling back over the 720 rod portage trail."

quote CrookedPaddler1: "I found an entire campsite; tents, food packs, cooking gear, tarps, and entire outfit! It was on Burke Lake, the island campsite near Singing Brook Portage. They had made some huge signs out of bed sheets, and I was ticked off and went up into the campsite to give them a piece of my mind. Piece of cardboard tacked to the tree read something like this, "Its been raining for 3 straight days, had enough, heading back to Iowa. Take what you want we will never use again!"


I was just starting out on a 10 day trip from the scout base, so we rifled through the food, took a few desert/snack items and headed out. We planned to reroute our trip so that we would take out whatever was left when we got back. Ran into another group from the base on their way out. They stopped and packed everything out, leaving it at the ranger station..."

quote schweady: "CrookedPaddler1: That sounds like the two father-sons families from Pennsylvania we met one year (pre-cell phones) at the landing at Little Gabbro, following a fairly wet and chilly week. While building "SOS" with rocks in the parking lot, one of the dads explained that they had come out days early and that his partner was running ahead to Ely to get the outfitter to come get everyone. "We were promised good weather! We were promised fish! We were promised that we would easily find campsites! We got none of it!! I coulda taken my kids to Disney World for what we paid for this!!" We caught up with his buddy along the road and got another earful on the way to town.

One of our favorite annual campfire reenactments.


"

quote lindylair: "Gun Lake campsite out of Mudro. Hiked back through the woods behind the campsite for a ways and then spotted something out of the corner of my eye, under a huge root cluster of a downed tree. Went by but stopped and went back to see if I had really seen what I thought. Sure enough it was a like new pair of boots, stuffed in a cave like area under the root cluster in such a way that you could not see what was beyond them. Got a huge shiver up my spine as I wondered if something might be attached to them.


Turns out they were just boots but nice ones, who knows why they were stashed under this huge root cluster, gotta be a story there. Glad it was just boots and no legs attached.


Here they are...



"

quote Blatz: "Back in the 80s across from campsite 1613( between Pipestone and Newton) up on a bluff we saw a tombstone. I climbed up to see what it was and discovered it was a recently placed there.Nearby was an empty bag of cement, a cardboard box from a crematorium, and a half full bottle of Jack Daniels embedded in the cement that held the tombstone in place. I can't remember the name but it said something like "Forever Free" on the stone. Have a picture somewhere. "

quote Blatz: "Also about 30 years I came across 2 submerged aluminum canoes wrapped around some rocks. I want to say it was some rapids between Lake 2 and Rifle Lake. Looked like they've been there awhile. "

quote missmolly: "North of the bwca, I've found lots of abandoned boats, the wooden ones down to their ribs, and the aluminum ones all leaky. I found a pair of moose antlers and multiple long-abandoned trappers' cabins, a couple with socks still on a line inside and old cans of grub. "

quote LindenTree3: "How do I reply, and keep this a family site, with a little humor?
As many of you know I ran Engine 672 out of Isabella for a few years.
One of the rangers came back to the Isabella work station after a paddle. They had an artistic repleca of a wooden (D-L-Do), that was obviously carved out of natural products from the BW. (Some campers left it behind)
This was good artwork, complete with a hole in the bow, probably 6" inches in total length and smooth. This vessel looked fast/ I'm talking canoeing here. ;-)
I can't remember what lake/campsite they found it at.
Another time I was driving my engine on St Hwy 1 near McDougall Lake.
Right in front of me in the middle of the road is a prized size DD.
I was not sure what it was, so we stopped to investigate.
Sure enough it was a DD.
Then I looked toward the lake not far from the Hwy.
There were a bunch of people sitting in lawn chairs, laughing there buts off.
We were set up, as were everyone who came down the road, we all had a laugh over that one.
PS, I found an Urn out it the sticks of Sequoia and Kings National Park.
Yes, 27 years of working in resource management, the list goes on of weird things I've seen.
"

quote Savage Voyageur: "I was fishing on negligee lake inside a PMA and caught someone's shirt in deep water. Kind of creepy.


I also have found numerous old fishing lures and Rods. "

quote airmorse: "Did you write your name in the guest book?


"

quote MagicPaddler: "An unopened bottle of stool softener. Felt sorry for the guy that lost it. 3 days later I found it in my pack. I put it in someone else’s pack. It went round and round to where every day you checked your pack. It did not go home with me. Next year on about day 3 into the trip and there it was again. It showed up on trips for about 3 - 4 years. The last time I saw it was at a Copia group dinner being slipped into someone’s jacket pocket. I guess that guy needed it. No one has seen it since. "

fishnfreak: "In quetico, found where someone had built a little rock ring fire pit high on the rock bluff above Agnes. Got to wondering why someone would have done this.


Dug around a little and found an old coffee can with a wallet in it. Inside the wallet was tons of little notes where this man had over the course of 40 years wrote down notes about his life and family. Some of it funny, some of it tragic. I t was his life story in that coffee can.


The little fire pit has one hell of a view of Agnes and this is where this fella would go and write and think about his life. i made a half hearted attempt to look up this man or his family but found nothing. The little spike camp spot is still there along with the coffee can.


In the BWCA found a message jar in a PMA but it was from a more recent time frame. It;s still there also."

jcavenagh: "I understand the intial OP query is looking at objects, but my actual, real answer is...
The right path...
Aug.16, 1978 - My 21st B-Day. I got up about 5 a.m. and got into a canoe. I just pushed out into the water. Everything was calm and still. There was about 3 feet of dew just above the water. When I lay down in the canoe I could see nothing. When I sat up, I could see all around.

So there I was, floating quietly at 5 a.m. in the little pool just below the Basswood Falls, and it suddenly dawned on me that I had just wasted the last 5 years of my life. The words of Pink Floyd suddenly went through my head…
And you are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

I literally gasped in shock. That was the first real epiphany I had ever experienced. It was one of those moments in life that is clearly etched and fixed in my memory.

Aug, 18, 1978 - The last night in Ely, we camped at local camp ground. There were these guys a couple sites over who looked like they might respond to an offer. They did. So I traded the last nickel of pot I ever owned to them for several large walleye fillets. And from that time I got my act together, moved ahead with my life and never looked back."

jdoutdoors: "I found a marble on Ensign while wading in to retrieve a lure of mine. I was perplexed. Of all the things people bring into the BWCA for survival and entertainment... a marble? Such a useless item. But it must have meant something! I kept it, and it now comes along on my trips in my possibles pouch."