Monday, July 30, 2018

I woke up in the middle of the night last night, and I swore the sun was out. As I crawled out to answer the call of nature, I noticed a SUPER bright moon. I guess there was a "super moon" or "blood moon" this weekend. The moon was bright enough that I did not need a flashlight to get to the latrine, and I couldn't help but feel that it wouldn't be difficult to paddle and navigate on such a night. Maybe that's why the wolves were out?

Today was our exploring day. We made another breakfast of spam, ova-easy eggs and bagels, then polished off a second pot of coffee. Later in the morning we shoved off and paddled the entire shoreline of Shell Lake. Today was once again beautiful. Light winds, clear skies, temperatures in the mid to high 70s. We were feeling adventurous, so we decided to go check out Little Shell Lake as it was a short portage from Shell. Little Shell Lake was a pretty little lake. We paddled around for a bit and decided to portage into Lynx. As we approached the portage, we found that the water levels were high enough to float straight through! We spend some time paddling around Lynx and fishing for a bit. Again, not much luck fishing, but I never tried very hard either. We headed back to our site on Shell and the day had pretty much passed us by. We spent the better part of the day in the canoe, so we crashed in our hammocks for a while before starting on our final dinner.

We watched a few canoe groups come through this afternoon. One group of two canoes seemed to be worn out and bickering back and forth. A second couple came by and asked us if we'd seen any bears. I'm never one to worry about bears in the BWCA, but they were insistent that they needed to secure an island site so as to protect themselves from bears. I thought about explaining how well bears swim, but I like to opt for less words spoken while in the BWCA. We wished them good luck and watched the groups paddle away.

It's kind of amazing how time seems to slow down in the BWCA, but also, seems to pass quickly; this was our last night in the BWCA and it was hard to believe. After dinner, I spent a while gathering firewood. We ended up staying up tending to the fire until well past midnight and polishing off the rest of the wine. The wood was nice and dry, the temperature was that perfect middle-ground where it's a bit chilly, but the fire is warming you to the perfect temperature. We ended up watching the bright moon rise again and doing our best to point out star figuration. I bet this was my favorite night I've ever had in the BWCA.