Pack up camp and get out of the woods day. We traveled back the same way we came. Ended up on Crab Lake with too much time to spare before our arranged meeting time with the outfitter back on Burntside. So we squatted in a camp and killed some time playing stick & rock baseball and resting up for the long portage back.

The portage definitely did not get shorter, but we got through it and back over to Burntside with all our gear in perfect timing for the outfitter to meet us. They brought some cold sodas for us and ferried us back across Burntside.

Back at their shop we unpacked and returned everything we had borrowed. We had hotel rooms waiting for us in Duluth so we saved the showering for there.

We headed to Duluth and enjoyed some excellent food at Canal Park Brewing, then hit a few other Canal Park spots throughout the evening.

In the morning we parted ways, with the two Milwaukee guys heading that way, and the rest of us in one car to the Twin Cities.

All in all, it was really a phenomenal trip. The weather cooperated and even provided us with a great story about being stranded without rain gear. Fishing was so-so, but we have been known to strike almost completely out, so it was much better than that.

When I mentioned at the top of this report the "weird circumstances" that led to me being in the Twin Cities leading up to the trip, what I was alluding to was the very unexpected death of my brother and best friend at age 41, just a couple weeks earlier. He died on July 2, and his funeral was just a week before we were supposed to head up for this trip. Although he was not planning to join us on this particular trip, he had done it with us in previous years, and loved the woods and camaraderie as we all do.

So it was a very rough period of time, planning a funeral and getting through all that, but having this trip just around the corner. But my trip partners were some of his best friends, and I was determined to still make it happen. They all agreed, and my work and family helped accommodate me so that I could still get away.

It was very cathartic, and emotional at times, but I can't think of a better way to try to put something like that in perspective, reflect, and begin the healing process. I'm so grateful to have been able to take this trip, with several of my brother's closest friends. The stories about him are one of a kind, and telling them is the best way I know of to bring him back with us for those periods of time.