Thursday, June 26, 2008 We awoke at sunrise to see this:  Awesome!! We skipped breakfast and broke camp and hit the water by 6am. The lake was silent and beautiful. As we made the short paddle to the portage to the Kawishiwi on the way to Farm lake a loon popped up 20 feet from our canoe. He was as surprised as Keegan and I were and was back under before I could snap a picture.

The portage heading toward Farm was excellent. Well traveled and very dry for the most part. We waved goodbye to our last portage, we hoped, and took a nice paddle down he river. We ran both rapids heading in that direction not needing to portage. 

The rest of the paddle was very leisurely, this part of the river has little or no noticeable current and we enjoyed the scenery.

Summary:

The fishing was great but next time we need to spend more time in this arena. We saw at least one bald eagle every day and the list of other wildlife includes: beaver, whitetail, snakes, herons, turtles, ducks, and otters.

I know we can trim the food pack a bit and still eat like kings. We did pretty well not over packing on clothes. I think next time we will leave the lantern behind and just rely on flashlights. Good sandals and warm socks are a must and I might rethink taking boots for the portages and just do them in our wetfoot gear.

What an excellent adventure. My Dad was really excited to have gone back and truly enjoyed the trip. He convinced me that it is more about attitude than age in that at 70 years he more than carried his weight on the trip. In fact he found that he would rather portage the canoes than the Duluth packs so after the 2nd day he carried the canoes on 95% of the portages and left the packs to boys and I. The boys are already talking about next year. Raleigh called one his best friend back home the day we got out and started recruiting him for next year. I was truly amazed and impressed at my boys ability to carry there weight and help out when necessary. When I asked Keegan to "dig in" when we were in the whitecaps he gave me all he had and we made it. I suspect they both learned a lot about themselves during this trip. I can't wait to get up there next year. I think these picks say it all.