Unnamed lake southeast of Boga to campsite 1930 on Isabella River; 7.0 miles, 4 portages, 74 rods.

I let myself sleep in a bit. I had been up for a while in the night. It seemed Rainy had picked up quite a few wood ticks while rolling in the grass and flowers, and they did not seem to like her tick treatment so they were abandoning her and crawling on to me. Between midnight and 2 am, I picked 11 off of me and stuck them on some tape from my first aid kit. We had a few ticks throughout the trip, but this site seemed to be loaded.

We did an easy portage into Boga Lake and felt like we were paddling back into civilization again. I expected Isabella to be crowded (all the permits for days before were gone), but that did not seem to be the case. One of the two sites on Boga was open, the first site on Isabella’s east side, and several sites I could see on the west side were open as well. It was sunny and almost dead calm as I crossed. I talked to one guy fishing who’s comment suggested fishing was very slow.

I portaged into the Isabella River and paddled to its confluence with the Little Isabella River coming up from the south where I took campsite 1930. It was a shorter travel day than I wanted, but it was hot and I was not in the mood to do the 130 rod portage. There are only a couple campsites open past that 130, and I decided to play it safe.

The campsite was nice enough, and with basically one fairly good size open area to set up tents and tarp by the fire grate. It looked like it had been re-habilitated not long ago. It had a fancy new square latrine that was about 150 yards back, with a wide path cleared leading back to it. The site was fairly closed in by the young grown of pines, but I could just see a pair of canoes go past. The bugs were tolerable that afternoon and evening, but the next morning the mosquitos were as bad as I think I have ever encountered in the BWCA. The number of them between my tent’s screen and rain fly was just unbelievable – like 300-400 or so – all of which got whipped up when I tried to take the tent down.

Campsite 1930

Morning Mosquitos

On the Isabella River