October 3rd. Day 1. Lake City, MN.

After a ton of preparation we are off! We arrived at the Lake City Marina, south of Minneapolis a little after 4 pm and began the assembly of our vessel. That vessel is a 1971 Catalina 22 with an 8 horse Johnson. Purchased for a mere $1200.00 in Washington last winter. It was a mess, but now it's beautiful... kind of. To me anyway. With a lot of work and cleaning she is the boat you see pictured here. You'll probobly notice it looks a bit cramped. Well it is. I am writing this at the end of day two, and we are just now starting to get organized to the point where we arn't crawling over each other trying to accomplish daily tasks. Who are we? Two Forest Service employees and one pizza chef with a sense of adventure and a lot of time on our hands in the winter. I'm Wade, and with me are two sisters. Karla, and Jenny. Each day we'll rotate the blogging task so you'll see things from each of our perpectives, and so that no one gets out of making dinner on their night.
So day one was a late start, but pretty succesful. We launched at Lake City Marina, which is, as we learned later, the largest Marina on the river. We then motored upriver 5 miles and crashed into a sandbar at Frontenac State Park, which we then deemed a pretty good place to anchor. I prepared Spaghetti and did the dishes, and it was bed time!