Soggy from the previous day, we packed up and left came. Again a snapping turtle was hanging out in the camp site. For some reason the dog has no interest in turtles, we lucked out there.

Paddling on a glass calm Knife Lake, was more than we could have hoped for, fluffy clouds, and no wind. What luck. We arrived at the Knife River and had to decide between portaging and running the rapids.

Flashback time: as a boy-scout we pulled up with 4 canoes to this portage, and my father and the other adult were debating whether to portage or not. My dad sad no way, the river will be more fun, the other guy was afraid of it being more dangerous further down. Then, a group of girl-scouts arrived with a couple of canoes (Carried up the portage), they proceeded to go down the rapids as we watched. The other adult turned to my dad and said, "Well now we "Have" to let the boys do it." I made it down with my dad no trouble, the next canoe made it no trouble, as did the 3rd one. We waited and waited, then a duluth pack come floating down, then another pack, then an empty canoe... The adult how wanted to portage was the only canoe that flipped...

We were split as a group, the experienced 2 wanted to go, the trainees wanted to portage. So that's exactly what happened. No rolled canoes, just some wet feet from getting snagged on a tree.

Next batch of rapids we came to looked easy, so there was no debate this time, down we went. and the next, and the next. Portage 912, didn't walk it, don't know what shape its in, Portage 911 same story. Then we got to Portage 80, and these rapids looked worse, we parked, looked, plotted, discussed, and ultimately chickened out. We determined that there is a critical turn point that you ether make and are good, or fail and go swimming. Due to the size of these rapids swimming was not a safe exit strategy.

Then we get to portage 381, we can see the rapids are a little longer but they don't look to bad, so without debating it, away we go. Started off easy, picked up speed, then the rapids take a sharp nearly 90 turn to the left and become significantly bigger... we bounced over a rock there at high speed, and landed in the smooth water at the bottom. No damage, minimal water from splashing, and then we looked up to see the most canoes in one place I have ever seen in the BWCA all at once and all staring at us. Someone yelled at us "That was faster than portaging!" There must have been 4 maxed out permits worth of canoes and people there all waiting to use the portage. Plus a small crowd on land with canoes being loaded onto shoulders.

We had seen about 4 or 5 other canoes total on the trip up to this point, talk about being rocked out of the mindset of isolation.

Carp Lake is little, and the river/rapids connecting it to birch were blocked by a fallen tree. So at portage 379 we carried our gear across for the second time that day... We camped on birch. Someone had lashed together a camp chair at campsite 1238. Probably the best campsite of the trip. Flat, a mix of rock and grass. Nice gravely beach to enter the water. Well we didn't roll any canoes over, we certinly took on some water from splashing about in the rapids, it might as well have rained all day for how much drying out our bags got.

Knife Lake, Knife River, Carp Lake, Birch Lake