Minnesota ATV enthusiast readies for deer opener

About three years ago, northern Minnesota resident Dean Schliek and his family of five, who live in Breezy Point, decided to travel to the Canada border. They approached their trip not by traveling in a passenger car or SUV, but instead the family loaded their tents and sleeping bags on an all-terrain vehicle and hit the trails. It was a fun, three-day adventure traversing 245 miles of backcountry they had never experienced previously. Instead of getting a hotel room, their lodgings were the forests. During one stretch of their journey, they encountered a trail flooded by the spring melt. Most of the terrain was pretty smooth sailing, probably 90% to 95% were ATV trails. All of them were fairly maintained and it went pretty smoothly until we got way into northern Minnesota, he said. A vast majority of northern Minnesota is pretty much all swamp. Once we got north of Big Falls, we had about 40 miles of wet, about 6 to 8 inches of water. While on an ATV trip to the