Overnight on a FROZEN ISLAND in a Snowmobile Cabin
It's winter time in the north woods of Minnesota, and the forest is covered in a dense fog. But underneath the blanket of clouds is a frozen lake dotted with a chain of islands. And so I'm heading out with my dog, with our tiny cabin in tow, to spend the day and night surrounded by ice. So grab yourself a drink and cozy up by the fire. Because it's time for some tiny cabin life.
We're in the Chippewa National Forest in northern Minnesota, on our way to a pretty incredible spot. It's one of the few undeveloped lakes in the area. What makes this one special to me is the chain of islands out in the main bay. Now, you may have noticed that we have a new form of transportation on this trip.
I just recently picked up a snowmobile to aid in our adventures in the wintertime. And this is its maiden voyage. All right, so we've got nine and a half, ten inches of solid ice, which is more than enough for bringing the snowmobile out.
I am going to go just drill one more hole out there just to make sure a little further out, that it's the same. But then we should be good to go. We'll grab the sled, grab the cabin, and, make our way out towards an island. Oh. If you're new to the channel, this right here is my bike cabin. It's a tiny camper that I originally designed to be towed behind an e-bike.
It has everything that we need to enjoy. Some time out in the woods, even in the middle of winter. And while a bike will always be its main mode of transportation, today we're going to be telling it with the snowmobile. Now, eventually, I'm going to be building a seat that will allow Ellie to ride on the sled with me. But thankfully, today we're not going too far.
And so she's happy to just be able to hike along beside me. And so eventually, we reached our island. All right.
This is our island. As you can see, it does have an established campsite on it. And, so it looks familiar.
It's because we came here this summer with my boat cabin, and, we hung out here and made dinner and camped out right down there. But today, we're going to be camping out right here on the island with the bike cabin. Setting up the cabin is fairly simple. I start by lowering down the jack stands. To remove some extra gear out of the cabin. I set up our lanterns on the outside.
Then I put together the wood stove. And just like that, we're good to go. We're experiencing some dense fog today. Normally, you'd be able to see the entire lake and more.
But for now, we're lucky to see more than a couple hundred yards in front of us. Next to the island where we're staying, there are two more. And they make up a nice little chain of islands which are fun to explore in the winter, as well as the summertime. All right.
Well, now that we're in the cabin, I want to get a fire going to get it warm in here. And then, we're going to have some lunch before we head out on the ice to do some fishing. Man, it feels good having the heat from the stove in here. Even though it's not like super cold outside. The humidity, which is causing all that fog is, making it feel very, very cold. So I'm making some tortilla soup here.
Rye picked this one out, and, it's funny, she. She said that she wants to be known as the mom that always has soup on hand when people need it. I love it. Oh, yeah. There's nothing quite like hot soup. On a cold day.
But after lunch, it was time to get out on the ice and try to do some fishing. I'm not an expert fisherman during the summertime. And certainly not in the winter either. But I did catch some decent fish earlier this year here, and so I figured it was worth a try.
For it. Well, let's see if anything's down there. So what I'm set up for today is, to catch some panfish.
When I was here in the summer, there are a ton of them, so we'll see if, we get any luck here. I'm using wax worms, so we'll put one of these guys on, drop a line down and see what happens. So if you guys take a look right there, that is our bait.
What we're going to be looking for is something else to pop up on our vex lar here. And if we if we see something, then we'll start kind of jigging around like this to entice the fish to, give our bass to try. Ice fishing seems to be a lot more difficult than fishing in the summertime, and that's mainly due to a shift in fish behavior in the winter. As the water temperature drops, the fish slow down their metabolism, making them feed a lot less and congregate in deeper waters.
So hard to tell if I'm looking at a fish down there or what, because something just keeps popping up right at the bottom, but it could be weeds or something like that. I think I might as well try a new spot, drill another hole. Unfortunately, I didn't get any bites. So we've got about two hours before it gets dark. I definitely want to have a fire because we're going to cook over it. And, would also be nice to hang out outside before we're stuck in the cabin all night.
But before we do that, I figured, why not take the sled out for a little bit of a cruise? At least warming up inside the cabin. So she's nice and comfy, and, we won't be gone too long, so let's head out. this right here is the largest island, and I believe it has two campsites. Yeah, you got this one right here, which has an awesome firing. And just all these beautiful white pines surrounding where you set up your tent.
It's just stunning. Yep. Here's the other campsite. And, Oh, yeah. I totally remember hiking out on that little peninsula over there this summer. I just think it's so amazing how you've got these lakes over here that are just chock full of these islands.
It almost feels like a little, boundary Waters wilderness area. It's, truly special. I. And so if you take a look at our pit here, it's just full of water and ice.
Which will put out any coals that we create with our fire, so. Well, I think I'm going to do is take some of these extra rocks on the side here and build a little platform inside there that hopefully can elevate and contain our coals. All right. We're going to have a little pre-dinner sip of whiskey. And, check out this awesome koozie for the bottle that I got for Christmas.
It's just perfect for out here. Now, again tonight, I have a real tree, and I've got some High West campfire, which is a blend of straight rye whiskey, straight bourbon whiskey, and blended malt scotch. And, I'm psyched to have it again out here by the campfire. Cheers. Oh.
Oh. That's good. I just love that hint of scotch. It's what gives it its namesake. That smokiness. It is, so good.
I think I'm kind of turning into a Scotch guy. Honestly, I love my rye, don't get me wrong. But, that that tastes great.
Well, guys, my original plan was to cook over the fire, but I'm just running out of daylight here, so I'm going to do it over the stove. Real easy. Dinner tonight? I'm just heating up some shredded chicken, and, we're going to throw it in a tortilla, add some cheese and hot sauce and boom, we got ourselves a meal.
Dear God, thank you for this food. Thank you for this time to be out in the woods. I safe tonight.
So good. And it's nice to have chicken for a change. I'm always having ground beef or steak, but this is really, really good.
Sushi. Don't take the ladies water. I nobody's got time for the last time, Mrs. Bronson. Well, even one month ago, the Earth suddenly changed its elliptical orbit, pendant falling. So begin to follow a path which gradually, moment by moment, day by day, to get closer to the sun.
The time is five minutes to 12 midnight. There is no more darkness. The place is New York City, and this is the eve of the moon.
And you're about to spend it in the twilight zone. Good morning girl. Oh, that light is bright. Oh, well, I just tried plugging in my lights and, they didn't turn on, so that either means we ran out of juice.
Or maybe the power station. Just, like, shut off on its own just to save battery or something. We'll find out shortly. But I think first things first. We got to let Ellie get out and go potty. Go on.
Oh, the sleeping setup isn't working out like it used to. I just get so sore in the middle of the night. In fact, it's like seeping into my dreams.
Like, literally just a second ago, I was dreaming that I was, like, really sore. Like, I was like, oh, my neck and all this. I woke up and it was, it was the reality. Check on our power here. Well, we're at zero, but thankfully, I always have backups. So if you check this out, this is my portable Starlink internet.
It's pretty awesome. I have this, for emergencies. I haven't used it this trip at all, but I have this little power station, so, yeah, I'll be able to use this thing to at least get the lights on. There we go. Voila. All right, it's warming up in here, and we should have coffee in no time.
Oh, it's good coffee in. And finally, it was time to pack up and head towards your. And thankfully, the snowmobile started right up. And then I got to my cabin down the hill and attached without issue. The ride to shore was uneventful, and before we knew it, we're back on land.
Well, we made it back. Oh, man, this was so much fun. There's definitely some things that I need to improve with this setup, but for stuff like this, it worked out just fine.
But that's going to do it for this adventure. Thank you guys so much for coming along. I want to give a special shout out once again to our patrons who generously donate to this channel, but again, to all of you who watch, subscribe, like these videos and comment.
It means the world to us. We are so blessed, so grateful to be doing this, for a living, you know? And, I'm really looking forward to 20, 25 and what, what God's going to bring us and what we're going to be able to do for adventures on this channel. I think it's going to be awesome for that. It's time for me to get home to the family. We'll see you next week. God bless.
2025-01-01 12:07
