Wednesday, July 11, 2007 The car was packed the night before. My 21 year old daughter Jamie and I were up early and on the road by 5:30AM. We stopped for coffee and chatted for a couple of hours while we drove. We had planned this trip 10 months earlier and were both pretty excited that it had finally arrived. She told me she hadn’t slept well the previous night because of the excitement. 2 hours into our drive she climbed into the back seat and went to sleep. She woke up a little before we got to Eau Claire. The last part of our drive was through pockets of rain, some of it a bit heavy. We arrived in Ely about 3 PM and went straight to VNO, where we checked in, went over our gear, trip planning, fishing areas, bait, etc. Looking out the window, I noticed a torrential downpour. Sure hoping things clear up for the next day! We got the key to the bunkhouse and went up and packed our personal gear into the pack that VNO furnished. Crap! I think I brought too much stuff. The pack must have weighed 70 pounds. Oh well, guess I’ll be getting a little extra exercise this trip. We set out for supper, which was very nice. Jamie ordered a filet and I had a strip steak. The filet was outstanding, but the strip steak was fair at best. We had a couple of beers too, which was nice after the 9 ½ hour drive. We walked through town a bit and bought a deck of cards and a fifth of rum for the trip. We stopped at the coffee shop and then browsed through a few of the shops in town. We headed back to our bunkhouse and turned in for the night after watching a bit of TV and checking out the weather forecast.