Saturday, July 13, 2013

After a much needed day of relaxation, today we have a long day of travel as we leave the Quetico and return to the BWCA. The girls are excited to portage the canoes (wait....where was this 5 days ago lol). They have grown a lot this past week!

We make the short paddle around the island to our first 30 rod portage toward Burke Lake. This portage is quite rocky but the girls handle it like pros! Back on the water, we paddle the narrow channel to the next 16 rod portage, where again the girls conquer the portage without a problem.

We paddle our way across Burke Lake without difficulty and prepare for Ranger Portage (which the girls did at the very beginning of this trip). This time they are ready for it and everyone claims equipment to carry so we can make a single portage trip.

Once on Bayley Bay, we paddle past our first night's campsite on Sunday Island and before long, Prairie Portage is in sight. The girls are ready for a break and are looking forward to lunch at a picnic table and being able to use a bathroom without mosquitoes biting their bottoms!

We pulled up to Prairie Portage, unloaded our gear into an out-of-the way spot, enjoyed lunch at the picnic table, the "modern facilities" and then portaged our way across to the United States. Once we had all our gear neatly stacked out of the way, we headed to the Welcome to Canada sign for pictures and then down the rapids trail for some sightseeing before continuing on our journey.

Once back on the water our goal was to paddle for a couple more hours to get as far toward Moose Lake as we could so that our last day could be a little more relaxed. We paddled Sucker Lake and in to Newfound Lake before deciding to take the site just south of the Skull Lake portage.

The site offered a shaded fire grate area, which was great since we wanted to do a lot of baking and the heat the past week had been keeping us from doing a lot of it. The girls set up their tents close to the water, even though there are more tent pads up the hill a little ways back on the site. We decided those sites were more in the open and with rain moving in, we liked the shelter we had closer to the shoreline.

We had planned to swim but once the weather began to change, we had to call that off for the night and spent time relaxing around the campfire and enjoying our last evening in the wilderness together.

The campsite had a perfect trail where we were able to take pictures of each of the girls portaging the canoe so they would be able to show their friends and family at home of their great accomplishment. Carrying an alumicraft canoe is definitely something to be proud of as a young teen!

As we enjoyed our campfire cooking, a group of loons visited not too far from shore and did a little dancing show for us. A perfect ending to a perfect trip!