This Timeline is:

•  a THUMBNAIL SKETCH of Laketrails happenings since we began our camp

•  a QUICK UPDATE on the building project begun in 1989

•   a FAST OVERVIEW for those who know little about Laketrails.

  We Laketrailers want to reflect on our almost 60-years of serving youth—primarily teenagers—on how far we have come with Fr. Bill Mehrken’s dream.  Who even guessed that the camp would last this long?

Many former staff and campers will return to Laketrails Base Camp from time to time summer.  For those of you who have not been up to the island since 1989, hang onto your hats!  On our little 17-acre island, you will now find our old haunts replaced by a number of new buildings:  the Lodge, the Chart House, six new or renovated camper cabins, the Wilderness Building (gear and trail food storage), the Shop, the new Knob Hill (camp director’s family residence), the Far Side (a four-room log cabin for staff), and a staff shower and laundry house.  After starting the camp with old army tents and over-patched buildings, Laketrails is now up to code on essentials: housing, storage, kitchen, water treatment plant, and waste disposal systems.

Laketrails’ tried and true wilderness program, however, did not need a face lift!  The Base Camp continues to provide the same challenging and exciting wilderness adventure and instills the same values today as it did in 1952!  Our original program, tested by time and experience, continues to serve the needs of youth!  A canoe trip leaving the island today is not much different than a canoe trip in the 1950s—just better canoes, packs and tents.

If you return during a summer camping session, maybe you will be lucky enough to arrive just as a canoe trip is leaving the island, or better yet, when a trip of tanned and weathered teen-agers paddles back to the base camp, digging in deep and strong and probably singing their hearts out.  It is THEN you will see for yourself that Laketrails is still doing what it has always done—the “pickniker” returns a renewed and seasoned adventurer bonded to friends.  The magic, the mystery, the myth of Laketrails is intact, alive and very well.

That does not mean the program has been standing still.  Not at all!  While our main focus is on the teenager and the exciting adventure of our regular six-day canoe trips, the program is evolving.  Now you can think of taking a much longer and more challenging canoe trip, perhaps even in a 30-foot voyageur-type canoe.  Or you might want to explore our latest innovation, extended canoe trips—our new “Voyageur Highway Trip,” a 20-day trip from Lake Superior to Lake of the Woods for more experienced campers.  And stay tuned, because we are dreaming of even looking beyond that horizon!  Who knows what else might be waiting at this adventure place called Laketrails!  But do come and see.  You are always welcome.

In the meantime, enjoy this Timeline that merely skips a stone across the starry surface of our wild, exciting and very challenging adventure place we call Laketrails—this little island in the sun where we disembark into discovering how to better Live, Love, Laugh and Learn!