Homer Lake Trip Report

Over the Memorial Day weekend, we took a day trip to Homer Lake. Homer Lake in northern Minnesota is an entry point to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. About half of the lake is in the wilderness and half is outside. The majority of it is outside the wilderness and there’s a short portage into Axe Lake which is just north of Homer. The lake also has offers two campsites. There’s one inside the wilderness and one outside the wilderness.

I’ve paddled on Homer a fair number of times and have used it on multiple trips. You can also use it to access the Vern River Loop instead of using Brule Lake, and it’s a pretty lake. It makes for a great day trip into the Boundary Waters, and if you’re motivated, you can paddle to Brule Lake from there and then walk back to your car on the road. Or you can portage up to Axe Lake which is also outside the Boundary Waters.

The lake itself is about two miles long and over that distance it packs a visual punch. As for wildlife, we saw about 30 turtles and the normal birds that you’d see in the area. We didn’t catch any fish, but we ran into some other people we knew who had good luck up on Axe Lake.

Here’s a shot from Homer Lake.

Here’s a shot from Axe Lake

There’s a little stream connecting Axe with Homer and with the ~40 foot of elevation between the two, I was hoping that there’d be a couple of pretty waterfalls or rapids. I walked it and found one right at Axe Lake. I didn’t have my tripod or all my camera gear otherwise I’d have shot a more artsy fartsy shot, but here’s what it looked like.

Speaking of ferns, the ferns and the trees have that beautiful spring green to them right now. The trees were about half leafed out.

There was also a rainbow in the sky. This was part of a halo around the sun.

And we saw a moose on the way to Homer from the Grand Marais area.

Anyway, it’s a nice day trip location that doesn’t get paddled as often as some of the the other good day trips in the area. If you don’t have a canoe, the closest place to rent a canoe would be Sawbill Outfitters.