The morning was chilly but calm and clear. After breaking camp we headed east to Pine Portage. ReelHappy and PennPaddler had gone off ahead of pghportager and me. By the time we had reached the portage they were out of sight. I started up the portage ahead of pghportager. I was startled by movement on the portage ahead of me. Approximately ten feet ahead of me a ruffed grouse waddled out from the bush and onto the portage. We stared each other down for a minute or so till pghportager, who had the canoe, came up the trail behind me. The grouse casually walked off the side of the trail a few feet and watched us as we passed through.

As soon as we were on Pickerel Bay we loaded up our canoe and headed north toward Pickerel Narrows. pghportager and I started to fish as we worked our way up to ReelHappy and PennPaddler. Shortly after turning to the west on Pickeral Narrows I picked up a lake trout on a silver and brown Hot-N-Tot. ReelHappy and PennPaddler managed to catch a couple smallmouth by the time we had caught up to them. Shortly after, ReelHappy had a lake trout on his line but lost it at the canoe.

The rest of the morning and into the afternoon was spent paddling against the wind for slightly less than 14 miles. Besides the wind, the weather was tolerable for most of the paddle. The fishing was slow and I only managed to catch a smallmouth on our way. We stopped for lunch on a flat rocky outcropping due north of Mosquito Point. Lunch consisted of the lake trout and a side of Szechwan Veggie Noodles. Seagulls managed to steal the fish remains from us as we ate our lunch. They did provide some amusement as we tried to determine their flock dynamics. Nearly a dozen of them fought for the remains of the fish with certain ones obviously having some sort of seagull seniority

After lunch we disembarked for the last leg of travel for the day. We could tell we were close to an entry point by the amount of groups we were starting to see. By the time we had crossed Batchewaung Bay we had passed at least 3 occupied campsites and saw other groups paddling toward the entry point on Nym Lake.

As we crossed Batchewaung Bay our efforts were spent fishing. The previous year we had passed through this area and did quite well with lake trout. pghportager and I trolled around a few islands several times. He had hooked into on fish but it was lost at the canoe. I managed to land one just before we had reached the narrows to Little Batchewaung Bay. ReelHappy and PennPaddler managed to catch two lakers while fishing further to the west of us.

It was starting to get late by the time we met up with ReelHappy and PennPaddler. We decided to try get to the campsite we had used the previous year. We passed a few other traveling parties and an excessively noisy campsite on our way. The constant hammering that was coming from the campsites had me thinking we would see a garage being built when we passed it. I don’t know what they were building back there; I couldn’t see what they were doing.

Just as we were arriving at our destination for the evening a weather system was moving in. To the south west of us was a black wall of clouds heading in our direction. Once we landed on shore we realized we were going to get hit hard because of the increasing winds and ominous clouds constantly moving toward us. The canoes were stashed away from shore under some small pine trees. We raced to set up our tents, get our gear stored safely away, and get a tarp put up.

The storm rolled in with a furry of wind and rain. The sun was almost completely drowned out by the dark clouds. Keeping the tarp up seemed to be a futile effort because the wind was constantly hammering it but we somehow managed. The seagulls were all but pushed of the lake. The strength of the wind coming across the lake would have surely capsized us if we had been caught out in it. It was one of the fiercest storms I have witnessed while camping but it was only short lived. Before long we could see blue sky and sunlight coming in from the back end of the front. When the rain stopped we went down to the lake and were graced with a double rainbow that appeared under the clouds to the east of us.

Now I’m not sure how the others felt after all was said and done. We had endured some less than favorable weather for the majority of our trip, but still, we did the best to enjoy our stay out in nature.  I saw this as a salute of farewell from this awesome country. We had made it, but at any given time we were at the mercy of nature. Nature had just shown us what it was capable of without killing us. The rainbow to me said, “Thanks for coming, see you next year!”

After the storm we collected firewood while exploring the forest around us. Fish were cleaned and dinner was being prepared. ReelHappy had packed some soy sauce and limes that we had carried for the trip that had been ignored. He surprised us by prepairing sushi with some of the lake trout and curing it in the soy sauce and lime juice. After curing for a while the sushi was quite pleasant. On top of that we had some cooked rice and the remainder of the lake trout cooked in various seasonings