We woke up this morning to the mystical sound of the loons (which had not quieted much all night long.) Having made the hard decision last night to cut our time at Moosecamp short and see if there were greener pastures elsewhere, we enjoyed a hearty breakfast of Pancakes and Bacon and packed up camp.

We had come to the decision that we were unprepared for how bad the flies were this year. They had turned parts of Tessa's ears into raw feeding grounds and our ankles were barely faring better. Also weighing heavily into the equation was the instability of the Jensen canoe for anything but traveling. The constant corrections were causing unnecessary back pain. Combine those factors with Cheryl's broken sole, and we decided to make the trip down the Moosecamp river several days early and see how things looked on Fourtown. If they were no better, we would push on out the next day and spend a night in Ely to re-group and consider our next move.

We loaded up the canoes and were just pushing off when a bank of dark clouds rolled in from the southwest. Deciding that we had sufficient time to travel down the lake to the east site, we pushed off and, with a fair tailwind, made good time. We paddled into the same small bay that we had used just two days before and watched as the storm passed just to the south of us.

Once we saw that we were clear, it was time to face the river. having seen two groups come up the river in the time that we were on Moosecamp, we were confident that traveling downstream would be no issue. We arrived at the shallow weedy entrance to the river and, not entirely knowing what to expect, pushed on in. We made good progress and quickly arrived at the first obstacle, the man-made logging dam. This has a decent landing on the upstream side, but was a bit of an ordeal on the downstream side. There is no easy place to get in/out of the canoe on this side and it required a bit of finagling to get clear.

Another long, beautiful section of river followed before we came to one of the most ambitious beaver dams we have ever seen. Standing 4 feet above the downstream water level and at least 150 yards wide, this is a sight to be seen! Luckily, the size makes it easy to traverse and we were quickly back on our way.

We encountered 7 more beaver dams along the lower portion of the river with varying degrees of navigability. Several we were able to just skim over or pull over, while a couple required lifting over. I left a large chunk of my pride on one of these! I pulled up alongside and found what appeared to be the most secure place to step out. Unfortunately when I stood, the branches parted and suddenly I found myself hip deep in beaver dam with one foot still in the canoe! When they finally stopped laughing, Mark and Cheryl grabbed my canoe so I could extract myself. After prying my leg loose and pulling my canoe across the dam, I was back on the water. A lot dirtier and quite a bit wetter, but none the worse for wear!

We exited the mouth of the river early in the afternoon and found a nice landing for lunch. While we were enjoying our granola bars and astronaut ice cream sandwiches, (a special treat for the trip) we were surprised to hear multiple airplanes and even a helicopter flying overhead. Assuming a medical evac, we continued to find a campsite for the night.

As we paddled south along the eastern shore of Fourtown, we quickly realized that the air activity was a result of the massive column of smoke towering above the lake. Apparently the storm we had seen passing to the south earlier in the day had sparked a wildfire on the island near the portage to Boot lake.

We paddled our way through the smoke and picked the campsite on the point in the middle section of the lake (#1105). This is a nice large site with many tent pads and excellent landing and swimming areas. The way the wind was blowing today allowed an occasional cloud of smoke to roll through the site, keeping the bugs at bay.

We efficiently set up camp and enjoyed a dinner of Cheesy Bacon & Potato Soup with some Fried Bread Dough (or Bannock as I understand it). We enjoyed a relaxing swim and, at dusk, sat on the rocks and watched the fire burn across the lake. Occasionally a pine would go up in flames sending sparks high into the air. It was an awesome site to remind us of the power of nature!

As we headed to bed I prepared to sterilize a bottle of water and realized that our SteriPen, which had served us faithfully thus far, had run out its batteries and was now useless. (These will do about 50L of water on one set of batteries, not 200L as we had been led to believe.) This coupled with the return of the flies when the wind began to die down this evening confirmed our decision to head on out.