Come morning, the night of in-activity had stiffened my knee to where I could barely move. Getting dressed in a prone position sure wasn't ideal but I made it work. I got out of the tent by rolling out and then pulling myself up on one leg with the help of a nearby tree. The first order of business was to hit the medicine kit and get some ibuprofen working again. I managed to move about slowly with a wilderness-fashioned cane and after about an hour the knee felt amazingly better! Still, it was a day we were going to move and I was not looking forward to limping my way across a portage. If there was a silver lining, the weather had improved with a bit warmer temps, clear skies and light winds. From that standpoint it would not be a bad day for travel.

The menu for breakfast this morning was pancakes. Once that was eaten and dishes were done the guys started packing up most of the gear while I contributed as I could. Once we were ready to push off, Dave helped me into my bow seat in the canoe and we were on our way back to Clear Lake--our goal for the night. Even with me slowing things down we were still able to get on our way about 8:30 AM so we were likely going to get to Clear by early afternoon.

At the first portage, I was assisted out of the canoe and it was decided I would take one trip across while the others would take two (which we had ALL done on the way in). I felt good enough to shoulder a light pack and set off with that and a couple of canoe paddles for walking sticks as I took my time down the trail. With less now in the food pack, we were able to combine some gear, reducing a pack and saving anyone from triple portaging. After an initial rocky/rooty climb, the path became pretty smooth and my first post-injury portage was actually going pretty well. I felt like I was really cruising down the portage while in reality the other guys went across, back and across again in not much more time than it took me to go across just once. This method worked well for the group and we successfully repeated it at the next portage that took us into Clear Lake. Also in our favor was the knowledge of which channel to take this time through the short rapids on the Kawishiwi river and it was now down stream so we cruised right through with no issues. We got to Clear about noon and had our pick of any campsite on the lake. We took the site that is second to the east of the portage that goes north out of Clear Lake as we had heard good things about this site and it did prove to be a good one with lots of picturesque pines, two decent canoe landings, a protected fire grate with a great seating area, nice tent pads and sunning rocks and a latrine that is close by yet still set back enough to maintain privacy and keep odors away from camp.

After camp was set up Kirby and Dave set out after fish again while I sat and sawed the sticks that had been left at camp into shorter pieces for a fire. Paul was pretty bushed so he took an afternoon snooze in the tent. This time Dave and Kirby returned with a nice fish on the stringer--a 22" walleye! Finally, we were eating fish fillets for supper! Kirby does not fish much so actually this was the first walleye he ever caught. Not a bad start at all!

Our pre-trip weather forecast had called for some rain this day and we did indeed note some clouds developing to the east and it started to get quite windy. The prediction was for rain to start about 5 PM and it did begin to sprinkle right on the straight-up at 5!

My knee seemed to have improved throughout the day and by now it was feeling about as good as it had since before I took my tumble so I was feeling brave enough to go out and see if we could supplement the fish already on the stringer. Dave and I donned our rain gear and he guided the canoe to where Kirby had caught the walleye. Right away I had action and was bringing in another walleye but this one was only a puny 6"-8" so it went back to grow some more. That fish ended things for both of us and the rain had intensified, giving us each a bit of a chill so we decided to go back to camp, clean the fish we had and get supper started.

With the weather, there was going to be no fire tonight and all of the cooking/eating/dishes was going to be crowded under a tarp. With the fresh walleye fillets supplemented with some left-over food pack items we still ate pretty well and had a tasty supper. The rain would not let up, however, so after securing what we could under the tarp for the night, we all turned in pretty early. We'd be well rested for the trip out in the morning which would likely be done in wet conditions.