Row, row, row my boat gently through the lakes...

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Wow we covered a lot of ground... err... water today.

That of course means... we're in Quetico! It's just about as I expected it would be, minus a few things here and there?the first being the actual distance we travel and the second being the actual length of time it takes to travel said distance. Those minutiae aside, it's not half bad. The worst thing, if anything, was the 5:30 wake-up call and the fact that I was carrying an 80 pound food pack on my back for three quarters of a mile at 8:30 AM... which really happens to be about the time I'd wake up each morning. Quite a change of pace for me. Before we even set foot in a canoe, I could tell this was not going to be your average vacation...

But on to the good stuff. We started out in Pickerel Lake and went through Bisk, Beg, and Bud Lakes before ended up on the quiet Fern Lake and set up camp. We only did two portages today, and let me tell you about portages, more specifically, about the love/hate relationship all canoe-rs invariably suffer. After paddling for a good chunk of the morning, we arrived at our first portage. We got out of the canoes, unloaded them, and the majority of us had our choice of what to carry first: our personal packs and a few accessories like life-jackets, or the aforementioned 80 pound food pack (which by the way, felt more like 800 pounds). It seemed like after ninety minutes or so of constant paddling, getting out of the canoe to portage was the best thing that could happen to you; however, by the end of the portage, no matter how short or absent of jagged rocks (rare) or lacking any drastic change in altitude (even more rare)... all you could dream of was being back in that canoe and paddling. Funny how that works out, no?

Either way, the first portage we did today was also our lunch time location, and it was perfect. It was a nice and short portage (we were still fresh enough not to mind that one as much as the others), and the end of it came out around some falls. We had a nice lunch of either PB&J (everyone but me) or sausage and cheese (me!), Kool-Aid, and very cake-like cookies. We were all so starved, it was delicious. The sun had come out by time we were well (enough) fed, and it was a perfect time to move on.

The second portage was much longer, and full of a lot more rocks and downhill for the most part. It was nice though; like so many of the portages on the map, this one again had some falls to get past. These falls though were much more like your typical falls that the first bout. It was awesome to walk up and down the rocks next to the rapidly running water and take it all in. I love water in most ways, shapes, and forms... and falls/rapids/downward moving water—whatever you want to call them—are one of my favorite forms of water. The ones here weren't like a real waterfall, cascading down a near vertical cliff, but they were still very enjoyable, and so we stayed there for a good twenty-five minutes (maybe longer even), just sitting there. We weren't in any rush... we had no reservations we had to meet!

By time we got to Fern Lake, we were tired and decided to throw together a campsite on one of the islands in the middle of the lake. It was a nice and quiet lake so we had to make our own ruckus. After putting up our tents and having a full dinner of macaroni and cheese with tuna (we were trying to use up the heaviest food items first so the food packs would be lighter in days to come... retrospectively, this was probably the case, but it never felt that much lighter), my sisters Abby and Hannah and I paddled across the lake in search of some wild blueberries. We amazingly docked the canoe along the only place we found blueberries on the land, and while picking the tiny (but mmm! so good!) berries, Abby somehow stumbled into a broken tree, snapped it loud enough for my parents to hear the commotion on the island, and fell right into where the tree used to be. It was hilarious; we all had a good laugh about it. We also made a bit of noise when I caught the first fish of the trip. Everyone had gone back up to the campsite after having no luck, and funny enough on what was going to be my last cast I caught a fish! I yelled for everyone to come down right away; they of course didn't believe that I really had one (I'd been faking the whole evening that I'd caught something... it got Hannah just about every time haha... how ironic, no?). After a few assurances they came down to admire my seven inch small mouth bass, who I have to say looked very cute. We let him go back into the wild, both because he was too small and we'd already had our supper, but also because it seemed right to let the first one go back. At least to me anyhow. It was a great way to end the first day of the trip, and after the fish was back in his lake, I was able to walk back up the rock to the campsite and watch the beautiful sunset knowing I had saved us from getting skunked. Can't wait for tomorrow, just hope I'm not sore...

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Photos

My sisters, dad, and me!
Just completed a portage

Portages number one
I look happy now... not 5 portages later