America's Best Adventures

By Kate Siber

If you’re planning to rob a bank in the Midwest, arguably your best escape route is through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. After entering this one-million-acre (400,000-hectare) bastion of lakes, streams, and primordial pine, birch, and aspen forests, you’re very unlikely to be found. That goes for law-abiding escapists, too. The Boundary Waters offer some 1,500 miles (2,414 kilometers) of canoe routes and 2,000 secluded campsites; in other words, it's the perfect territory in which to disappear for a while.

Plenty of people organize their own trips into the BWCA, but it’s far easier to let Ely, Minnesota-based Boundary Waters Outfitters do the work. They’ll organize meals, plan a route, rent equipment, and hand over all the maps. For true solitude, go in late August or early September when the summer crowds have thinned, or have the outfitters charter a float plane, which will drop you off far away from any signs of civilization.

Take at least four days to explore lake after lake, punctuated by rocky cliffs, waterfalls, and Native American pictographs. That’s about how long it takes to tune in to the heartbeat of this place—the silky water, the changeable skies, the deep fairy-tale-like forest, and all of the small details: moose and deer frequenting the shallows, eagles gliding between trees, and fresh wolf prints on shorelines.

Need to Know: Boundary Waters Outfitters (www.boundarywatersoutfitters.com) fully outfits trips and offers guides on a custom basis. Unguided, four-day trips start at $406 per person.

Based on articles from National Geographic Adventure ngadventure.com

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National Geographic named the Boundary Waters as one of their 50 Trips of a Lifetime