I woke up early but didn’t want to get up. I stayed in bed relaxing, reading, and cat-napping until 9:00 a.m. I guess I needed the rest. Outside of the tent everything was wet. The thought of going out into it was not pleasant, but I screwed up my courage and forged ahead.

We had a simple hot breakfast of oatmeal and hot chocolate and then made a game plan. We decided even though this was a burned area, we could make the site work. Even though we were feeling much better, neither of us felt up to moving camp, so this would be our base camp. Camping in a burn area, we rationalized, would be an experience we could brag about. We spent some time reorganizing and resetting camp, and then planned a daytrip heading east.

We paddled east on Rush Lake with just essentials – water, lunch, rain gear, etc. – to find the portage to Little Rush Lake. The portage was bad. It was flooded and more like wading down a small stream. The rocks the water was flowing over were slippery. Halfway across the portage there was a large tree to climb over. It was about shoulder high and you couldn’t go under it or around it. It was challenging to get over it and then pull the canoe over.

Despite the portage getting to it, Little Rush Lake was pretty. It was quite a contrast seeing that the north side of Little Rush was burned, but the south shore was not.

We continued east towards Skipper Lake but we could not find the portage. Tom, the campground host at Flour Lake, told us that the stream connecting the lakes could be paddled in high water. Since our last portage was flooded we thought maybe the water was high enough. Besides we could not find the portage. So we paddled the stream. We bottomed out a lot and created numerous new scratches on our hulls while picking our way through a rock garden. And this was in solo canoes which draw a lot less water than a tandem canoe. The water would have to be significantly higher for a tandem to make it through without bottoming out.

Skipper was a nice lake. The campsite on Skipper, however, was unimpressive. The landing was not good and the fire grate was very high and not level. We ate our lunch there and the sun came out a bit while we were there. It felt good.

Making our way back to Rush Lake, going the other direction, we were able to find the portage from Skipper to Little Rush. We took it to avoid paddling the rock garden again and to see where it came out on the other side. The portage was OK until the end. The Little Rush Lake end was blocked by a large down tree right at the water’s edge. No wonder we couldn’t see the portage on the Little Rush side! We had to wade through muck as a detour in order to get to the lake. It was probably going to take a NFS crew to clear that blowdown.

The portage from Little Rush to Rush was much easier going in this direction. The tree was easier to get over and the footing better.

Once back at our base camp, I turned Jim onto vodka lemonade. He never had it before. He liked it.

Jim commented at camp that we had no chipmunks, squirrels, or mice at this site. We figured that they hadn’t yet repopulated the area after the fire. Jim also had some welts on his neck by the collar line. He told me he got them after paddling through a swarm of gnats. I think those gnats were black flies.

Nice evening tonight. The Sawbill Outfitter’s website said that the high temperature for the day was 55 and the low 45. It was cool but no rain. No bugs. We did not have a campfire.