We really enjoy getting away for an "up north" trip in the summer. As we have in other years, we rented a cabin near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA). This year we picked a little knotty-pine gem of a place on Burntside Lake at the edge of the BWCA from the folks at Ely Lodging. The Boulder Point cabin sits right on Burntside - a very large, deep, pristine lake full of little pine-covered islands. It was a great place to get away from it all, slow down, and relax. |
The cabin is secluded. It sits a ways off a gravel road and down a 2-track drive. |
It had a cute little shed with plenty of wood for the fireplace and sauna. |
A view of the cabin from the dock. It sits right on the water and has great views of the lake. Our kayak, Maggie, was all rigged up for some sailing. |
Not sure when the cabin was built, but it's been extensively remodeled and now has a huge living room with vaulted ceiling, skylights, and windows on 3 sides. |
The sauna is just steps from the water. Even in the summer, it got cool enough in the evenings that we used it almost every day. |
Even so, this was one of the nicer ones we'd ever had to use. |
Getting the wood-fired sauna heated up. It had little window so you could look at the lake while you were steaming. |
It certainly does have a lot of stuff going on - lichens, moss, and shiny quartz deposits. |
The cabin sits on a point beside a huge boulder (hence the name). Here's the outdoor fireplace. |
The water was clear and cold and tasted great. |
We had a little beach and the sandy bottom was great for swimming. |
Of course, that made it easy for the fish to tell where we were. We had fun, but no luck catching them. |
Maggie after a day on the water. The wind kept us off the lake a couple of days, but we did get in some sailing and paddling. |
The lake is filled with these little rocky islands and long, narrow coves. |
There would be these long chains of rocks that you could just barely float over and yet the water of the other side was 90 feet deep. |
For such a big lake, it was amazing to see how calm the water could be at times. |
We had almost no neighbors and a couple of days we didn't see another boat on the lake. Here's a nearby cabin with one heck of a view. |
The neighbors we saw the most often was the family of little ducks. Goldeneyes, we think. They floated past our dock at least twice a day. |
Here are some Ox-eye Daisies and Hawkweed. |
 And the Lupines were in full bloom as well. |
We stopped at Palisades Head to soak up the great views of the big lake. |
This view from Palisades with Shovel Point in the distance made for a great end to our trip. |
We had electricity, but no indoor plumbing, so you know what that means... 
Gelina really liked this little rock outside the sauna. 
They supplied bottled water for drinking, but we mostly used water from the pump for everything. 
The lake was so clear it was hard to tell how deep the water was. 
A little island in the middle of a quiet bay.
The wildflowers were putting on a good show. 
We tried to soften the blow of vacation being over by coming back along Lake Superior's north shore.