I spent a pretty clammy, uncomfortable night in my humid tent and realized at some point during the night that it was still holding a bubble of water underneath it from all the rain that came through 2 days prior. I use a piece of plastic as a footprint for my tent and there was water trapped under it that I couldn't push out. It wasn't coming into the tent as water, but I think it made the floor a little damp and sticky and just overall I was fairly uncomfortable most of the night. Not being able to swim/bathe since I arrived on Horseshoe didn't help matters either.

Then, I was greeted by a decent little rainstorm in the early morning hours....probably 2 hours of pretty good rain. This annoyed me because I was definitely packing up and moving today, and now had to pack up a wet tent & tarp, etc. I hate doing that.

So I packed up my soggy camp and headed out to find a destination for my last night. The only lake that it really made sense for me to go to, given that I was exiting through Poplar the next day, was Caribou. Maybe Meeds, and I was open to that idea, but anywhere else farther west would have just put me that much farther away from my exit point, and I really didn't want to have to travel much that day. Whatever travel I was going to in the park on my way out was going to be followed by a 10-hour drive back home to Chicago that same day, so I wanted to get out early, and not too weary from portaging.

So I headed up to Caribou and to be completely honest wasn't even sure if I was going to set up camp for one last night. I was fairly annoyed and uncomfortable with all my wet gear. I easily got to Caribou early and the exit point through Lizz was right there in spitting distance. I started thinking about calling my wife and how excited she would be to hear from me a day early, and also maybe breaking up my drive home with an overnight stop in a hotel somewhere. I told myself I would see what's available on Caribou and if I found a specific type of site, I would stay.

I'm going to sound like a real princess right now, but I told myself I need an open, exposed site with some space in the sun to dry things out and for me to soak up some rays if it got nice. I also told myself I needed the weather to start looking better - I wasn't going to spend another afternoon in my tent listening to rain, and I wasn't going to spend a night in some shabby low lying campsite that wasn't going to dry out. It was still very overcast and I wasn't sure what the weather was going to do. I also needed to be able to get in the water and swim a bit from this site.

So I just circled Caribou and visited every site. Starting at the southeastern site I worked my way around one by one, and each one was either occupied, or exactly the kind of site I didn't want to stay at. Low, small, wet, shabby. I couldn't do it, given that I had such an easy route out of there. So 7 sites went that way and I had one left...the one directly across the portage into Lizz. It was open, and...

It was the perfect site.

There was a lot of exposed space, and a cool humongous rock right in camp, and swimming would be no problem. Even the tent pad at this site was right out on the lake, exposed.

One problem though...as soon as I climbed onto camp it started raining again. Not hard, but enough to once again put me on the fence about staying another night. The portage out was within clear view and right across from my site!

But it was still early enough in the day that I wanted to see what the day did weather wise. I set up my tarp and put my stuff under it to keep it dry, and given that I was still completely skunked on this trip in the fishing department, decided I'd go out fishing while I waited to see what the weather did.

And I caught 3 fish! Three measly Walleye, all of marginal keeper status, but they all went back in anyway. It felt good to be on the board and not have to tuck my tail between my legs and talk about getting completely skunked. I am not a polished fisherman, but I can usually get something in the boat and it would hurt spending 4 nights in the BW with zero fish.

And while I was out there, more and more blue skies from the west began heading my way until at some point before noon or so, it was clear that we had a stunner at hand and I was gonna stay.

Back at camp I pulled all my wet, damp crap out and set it up/laid it out and with the sun fully out now, it dried out in about 10 minutes. I took a dip and put on some fresh clothes and was all of a sudden feeling like a million bucks and really glad I stayed in this night.

The rest of the day passed without event, except for the two guys that decided the best place to fish on all of Caribou Lake was 15' in front of my campsite, and sat there fishing for a good while. What the hell? I wasn't sure if they wanted me to invite them up for a coffee and a bagel or what was going on. Awkward. I'm glad they didn't catch any fish.

The site was also right across a short span of lake from another campsite which I could see and hear crystally clear, so the solitude I found at the beginning of the trip was predictably not in play on this entry point lake. I guess I was being eased back into civilization.

But I was content and treated to a seriously awesome sunset that I had a perfect view of from right in camp. That sunset was the universe rewarding me for camping a 4th night. A nice fire then off to bed in the now perfectly dry and not clammy at all tent.

I got up early and wasted no time breaking camp and shoving off, anticipating the long drive home on what was now the 4th of July. In a stroke of irony, as soon as I launched my boat from camp, a large family group paddled to the portage and beat me there....no idea how they all got up and packed that early, but there they were. I had to wait for them to move through the portage and basically followed them through both portages and Lizz Lake on our way to Poplar. They weren't actually that slow, but I hadn't met anyone on any portages this entire trip so I thought it was quite something that on my way out I got stuck behind a large group. Once on Poplar, I showed them what a solo with a kayak paddle can do and left them in the dust. ;-)

I showed up back at Rockwoods and Mike was surprised to see me so early - I think it was around 8:00. I explained how close I was camped to the Lizz portage and that I had 10 hours to drive and it made sense. I grabbed a shower, settled up with Rockwoods and off I went down the gunflint. Wife was happy to hear from me so early in the day and talked my ear off for 3-4 hours I think, which I didn't mind because it passed the time. A line of thunderstorms passed through the entire north country down through central Wisconsin on this day....I saw the huge black wall cloud in the west as I approached Duluth, and knew that meant it was going to be bearing down on Ely, the boundary waters and all the places I just camped very soon. And I was damn glad not to be out in it. I drove the entire length of it all the way down past Eau Claire though. From what I read, it didn't end up being an especially destructive storm, but there were some instances of high winds and hail that I've read in other trip reports from people who were in on the 4th.

Drove home in time to spend the night of the 4th with my family at a neighborhood gathering which was nice and unexpected. And thus my first solo came to a close.

All in all, it was a little bit of everything - challenging, fun, rainy, peaceful, lonely, scary, beautiful, emotional, thrilling....I could go on. Ultimately I probably prefer the group trips with my buddies and I should start bringing my kids as well, but this is a definite bucket list item I can check off now. I don’t regret it for a second and had an amazing experience.