~Gillis Lake, French Lake, Powell Lake, West Fern Lake, Virgin Lake, Little Saganaga Lake

We woke up late and sore. Not in too big a hurry to start portaging again because of the previous day, we enjoyed the morning and the view. The campsite seems to be surrounded by burn but is untouched itself. There is a natural ramp to the landing pad where a person with mobility issues could get up there, even though the site itself is a decent height above the water and still close. The biggest feature about this site is the kitchen area. There is a rock table built up where you can prep food and set pans. Also nice was swimming area in front of the site. I took the opportunity to walk out into the water to get my pant legs wet and rinsed my shirt off. It was getting warm by 9 and we decided to quit stalling. We had skipped the oatmeal breakfast and only had tea and coffee so we ate a brunch and packed up, on the water by 10:30.

The portage to French Lake was unremarkable. French lake itself was very pretty and here I was reminded again of just how rocky it is on the Gunflint side and how many cliffs there are. The portage to Powell was into the burn again and pretty steep uphill with lots of underbrush.

Powell was pretty. A smaller lake but big enough. We had lunch at the campsite on top the big rock. The view was amazing. After contemplating jumping off the ledge into the lake but not finding a good spot for it, we continued on. The portage to West Fern was wet and muddy. I wonder if we skipped some of it because it was very short, like 5-8 rods. I slipped and stepped into the stream running through the portage.

West Fern was bigger but similar to Powell. We paddled through quickly. The portage to Virgin was decent with the landing on a big flat rock. Virgin was nice. We saw an interesting point where it looked like we could see downhill from the water so we went to check it out. I think this was by the portage to Peter. Right before we got to the edge to take a look, a mama loon jumped out of some grass sticking out of the water which turned out to be a nest. The baby came out of the nest too but started to come straight toward us as we drifted by. The mama surfaced and called and the little one went to her. Adam said there was another egg in the nest but we didn't stick around to double check. The cool part was the papa loon was trying to pull us into the middle of the lake but surfacing near us and making a lot of noise. It kept doing this after we turned into the main portion of the lake and put some distance between us.

The portage from Virgin to Little Sag was a little longer than the others but not too bad. It was really hot though and the bugs were out again. The flies and mosquitoes were out the whole time but not worse than I would expect in June when we had gotten rain the week previously. Honestly I was most concerned with the bees since I am somewhat allergic and there were quite a few at this landing.

The portage itself was up a bit then a lot of down and a lot of underbrush. Some was taller to provide some shade but not enough. I was looking for the great views of little sag but those were very limited and even by going off trail the top of a boulder on a hill would only give partial views.

Once on Little Sag we went straight for the nice site on the point on the west side of the lake. Seeing that it was available, we took it and unloaded our gear. After getting set up we decided that the weather was quite clear and hot so probably not the best for fishing and we wanted to sit and enjoy ourselves so we broke out the brandy/wine and set up a bucket and chairs under the tarp, leaned a pack against the bucket to block the wind and played cribbage. A couple hours later we make dinner of brats with mustard and slices of bread for buns. It felt like we were eating like kings.

We swam, rinsed our clothes off, fished a little with no luck and played more cards into the evening. It was an enjoyable evening.