Canada’s Lake of the Woods
Stretching across almost 1,500 square miles at the border between Canada and Minnesota, Lake of the Woods is “sweeping,” said Michael Tortorello in The New York Times. After the Great Lakes, it is the largest body of freshwater that touches U.S. soil, and its 14,000 islands and “storied cabin culture” have made it a “destination for generations of families.” A buddy and I had come to ditch our families, though, setting out on an 18-foot sailboat to explore the lake’s Canadian waters. Sure, we misread the clouds and encountered a storm. But, by “luck and pluck,” we survived its 50-mph winds, and the scare only helped us appreciate the placidity of Micrometer Bay. Along the bay’s shoreline, we encountered pelicans that looked like C-130 planes and fishermen hunting trophy muskellunge, a “4-foot-long sea monster of the northern freshwaters.” Jumping in, we swam until we were shivering.
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