The portage into Wood was pretty easy, but seemed longer than I thought it would be. Joel dropped his knife on his way down the portage, so I went back to try to find it. After making it all the way back to the gravel parking lot, I had not found his knife. As I started back down the portage, I prayed to God that if it was His will that I find Joel's knife, then please let me find it, and if not, then so be it. 2 or 3 steps later, his knife was laying on the side of the portage. Praise the Lord!

Once I arrived back at Wood Lake, the canoes were loaded and we begin to paddle. Noah, Joel, and Colman lead the way.

As we paddle across Wood Lake, we noticed some large white birds on the island in the south end of Wood Lake. I belive they are Trumpter Swans.

Levi likes to stop and have his picture taken on rocks, so we stop for this one.

The portage from Wood to Hula seemed short and was a pretty easy portage. Our group makes quick work of this portage and we quickly paddle across Hula. The portage from Hula to Good was a little longer, but again we make it across with ease. Once on Good, we paddle down to the narrows to see if the site there is open. We are in luck, and make this site our stopping point for the day. The site at the narrows of Wood is a very nice site with plenty of room for tents as well as good trees for hammocks. It has a great view of the lake from the firegrate. The only down side is the climb from the water up to camp. This site sets up 50-60 feet the above water. In my opinion, it is well worth the climb.

After setting up camp, it rains for about a half hour. After the rain, we decide to try our luck fishing on Good. While fishing we see deer on the shoreline on the west side of the lake. We also saw a beaver swimming along the southern shoreline. Levi made friends with a dragonfly. Noah caught 3 northern pike, Colman caught crawfish and a snapping turtle, Joel caught 11 northern pike and a small mouth bass. Joel's largest northern pike was the biggest of the trip.

After fishing, we head back to camp, and have dinner. After dinner, the it begins to rain again. Levi has had a loose tooth for a few days, and finally pulled it today. Hopefully the Tooth Fairy will find her way to the BWCA. Today was a Great day!!

It is a pretty easy portage, up then down. Levi and I talked about how we missed Mom and how we hope she's having fun without us at home. Once on Indiana, the wind picks up quite a bit. Everyone don's their PFD and we begin to fish Indiana. The water is amazingly clear, and the bass are on fire. After getting blown around by the wind for a while and catching our share of bass, we decide to head back to camp. As we paddle back across Good, Levi picks up a nice Walleye in the narrows of Good. Once back to camp, we spend some more time relaxing, journaling, and then make dinner. We have fish, and make our version of pizza. (Tortilla's with tomato sauce, cheese, and pepperoni) Tonight we eat like Kings! Everyone enjoyed our relaxing day today, ready to get some sleep so we can make our way up to Basswood tomorrow.

Once on Hoist Bay, we paddle over to check out the submerged logging equipment. With the water levels, it isn't hard to locate the cab of an old peice of machinery. Joel catches a nice small mouth bass while we are in the area.

As we paddle through the motor boat area of Basswood, we begin to worry if we'll find a site that isn't occupied today. We notice several motor boats fishing, and all of the sites within the motor use area are occupied. We are excited to find a great site just north of the motor area and decide to make it home for the night. We stay on the middle site on the northeast side of Washington Island. It has great views of the lake on 3 sides, several tent pads, and plenty of hammock hangs. There is a great area for swimming too on the west side of the site. About the time we get camp set up, it decides to rain for about an hour, then clears off to sunny skies again. We fish most of the afternoon, and continue to catch more fish.

We make fish taco's for dinner. Joel talks about brining Taco Bell hot sauce packets for fish taco's next year.

We paddled by a building on the island north of the narrows on Basswood. Not exactly sure what the purpose of the build might be? After paddling a while longer, we decided to stop for lunch at a sandy beach on the east shore of Basswood. The wind is pretty steady today, so a shore lunch is in order. Colman decides to do some fishing during our lunch break.

After lunch, we paddle southwest and decide to stay at a site northeast of Gary Island. The wind made paddling a little more challenging today. Noone caught any fish during our paddling today, and we were all pretty hungry. Colman saved the day by catching a very nice small mouth bass, then Christopher our camp chef, made up some fish and rice for dinner. We all ejnoyed dinner very much, and talked about how good dinner was!! We all needed the pick me up for sure!! Joel lost his knife, then found it again. Both Colman and Joel told me how they both prayed to God. Colman to catch a fish for dinner, and Joel to find his knife. God answered both of their prayers again today. God is Great!!! Cullen has been talking about Grace Collingsworth all day. All the other boys are telling him he should ask her out to the movies when we get back home. It's fun for us old guys to listen to the young men in our group talk, and watch them work together. It's really cool to see the next generation of our family transitioning from boys to young men. What a better place to share these memories and experiences than the BWCA!!! We are all pretty tired, time for bed. We are all looking forward to pancakes for breakfast in the morning.

The 480 rod portage turned out to be much easier than anticipated. Thankfully my canoe partner took the canoe and a bag the entire way (I offered to take it many times but he refused) so it was even easier for me. We saw the largest beaver damn I had ever seen, it was at least 4 feet tall. Stuart falls were beautiful and so was Stuart Lake. We took the Island campsite because we always look first for island campsites. While fishing we checked out the other campsites on the lake and none were significantly better than the campsite on the island in our opinion. We caught a bunch of walleye and pike which we ate for dinner that night.

After waking up to a foggy Stuart Lake, getting our normal breakfast and coffee in, we headed off towards Iron. The portage out of Stuart was ROUGH. Lots of downed trees, we almost lost the path at one point. We all agreed that this portage was harder than the first portage of 480 rods even though this one was shorter. We thought we might stop at a lake in between depending on how we were feeling and if we liked a campsite we saw. We ended up liking the one on Rush so we stayed there.

The next day we wanted to spend on Iron. We got an early start and still every single site we passed on Iron was taken. Luckily we have all stayed on Iron before so we weren't too upset, we just kept going to Crooked. We fished curtain falls on the way and caught some nice walleye and bass directly in whitewater rapids just under the initial falls. The first 3 sites we passed on Crooked were also taken so we ended up at the island site north of Saturday Bay where we caught more fish and had another feast.

The island site in Friday Bay that we wanted was taken, so we took the one south of it for the next night. This site was very wide open with lots of room to throw Frisbee around and play fetch with my dog. We caught some VERY nice walleye around this site and also had to take cover under the tarp for an intense thunderstorm.

Now we were left with a decision, go south towards Gun Lake to Mudro, or go around to Lower Basswood Falls to Mudro. Since we were a lot further than planned by now due to all the taken campsites along the way, we decided to go the long way around towards Lower Basswood Falls. We stopped for the night at another island campsite in between Thursday and Wednesday bay. It was a pretty cool site with great views of narrow waterways. Big open water was getting old after the last 3 nights. For almost 24 hours after the storms, it was cloudy and dreary, but luckily eventually cleared up.

The next day we paddled past the pictographs to lower basswood falls hoping at least one campsite would be available. We got the northernmost site by the falls where you could sort of see them in the distance and just barely hear them. It was a great site with good hammock trees. The weather had cleared up and it was getting a little hot so a few of us went for a swim in the cold early June water. We caught and ate fish again making it 7/7 fish dinners for our trip!

The next day we decided to send it from Lower Basswood falls to the car parked at Mudro EP. It was a long day, Horse river has a bunch of unmarked portages and was much more difficult than we expected. We also had a headwind pretty much the whole way back.

Overall the trip was a huge success. This pretty much finished western BWCA for us so we are going to try a trip on the East side next year with goals of 50 miles and 100 fish. Let the planning for our 2020 trip begin!