Voyageurs National Park: Paddling Tom Cod Bay

Today Noelle, Sierra and I loaded up the canoe and our paddling gear and headed south down to Kabetogama Lake. We put our canoe in the water at the swimming beach at Woodenfrog State Forest Campground and paddled around the north side of Bittersweet Island

and west to Tom Cod Bay. I thought Tom Cod Bay might be a good place to see some wildlife, since it is shallow and weedy. It's definitely not a place for motorboats.

As we passed some fisherman and entered the bay, we decided to take the first branch of the bay that lead west.

We quickly passed a beaver lodge

and soon came to a dead end. No problem, we just paddled through some reeds

to the next channel over and headed upstream. By this time we were getting hungry for lunch. Without a place to pull up off the water, we paddled into some cattails and ate in the canoe.

After eating we paddled as far as we could go until our progress was blocked by a beaver dam.

We turned around at the beaver dam and started to make our way back to the mouth of the bay. Unfortunately, a pretty stiff headwind made the paddling a little bit more work than we would have liked. A loon entertained us as we paddled, diving and swimming close to us for a while.

Once back on Kabetogama Lake, we paddled close to the southern shoreline.

There were some interesting rock formations that we paddled past. We passed Bittersweet Island to the south this time

and back to the beach at Woodenfrog. We went for a refreshing swim at the beach and caught minnows

and explored for spiders.