Wow! What a day! We started with a nice hot breakfast of oatmeal, bacon, and hot coffee instead of cold soak coffee. Had a nice tailwind on Kekekabic but our bodies were still moving kind of slow. The portage to Pickle Lake was a mix of gentle to moderate ups and downs. It made a good warm up for the day.

The portage into Spoon was steep at the Spoon end. Then things got exciting! As we entered the narrows to reach the portage into Dix, Stew whispered, "There's a moose." Now you have to understand that Stew is always thinking rocks are moose so I looked around doubtfully. But sure enough this time, way up ahead, was something very large and dark brown moving around right in the middle of the stream bed. As we got closer, you could see a huge head and antlers moving around, its nose dipping under the water to feed. The body was almost entirely submerged. Once in awhile it would get a leg up out of the muck and take a step forward. Then I noticed a cow almost completely submerged on the right side. She was staring at us and became nervous pretty quickly even though we were still a long way off. She lumbered to her feet (apparently she had been lying down to feed) and crashed off into the woods. But Mr. Bull Moose wasn't done with breakfast and did not care that we were watching. Stew started taking video on his phone as we kept a large distance between it and our canoe.

Meanwhile, a group of 3 canoe with a scout troop had come over from the portage from Bonnie and were closing the gap behind us. We motioned quiet and they slowly slid forward. Then the moose waded back over to the left side shallows, took some more mouthfuls of weeds and sauntered into the woods. We started to slowly paddle toward the portage, but Stew was concerned the moose could come back out and charge us in the very narrow channel. Suddenly our hearts lurched as the moose crashed back out of the woods much closer to us. Fortunately, he only had food on his mind and went back to eating...and eating...and eating. There wasn't room to pass safely and we didn't want to appear as a threat. So we sat. Finally he moved back into the thick woods. We could hear him crashing along and could tell the shoreline was very steep there. The moose would stop and eat some leaves and branches once in awhile...we could see the shrubs swaying and jerking. We crept slowly forward watching carefully for a change in speed or direction.

Finally we reached the portage. However, now we had no way of knowing if we would cross paths with the moose on the portage, especially if he decided to cross over the path to meet up with the cow moose. So we stuck together tightly: Stew with the canoe and me walking with my nose almost touching the stern of the canoe. In the past, I have had success using a canoe as a big rack of antlers to intimidate a male moose into leaving. This whole moose event took 25 minutes! Never have I had such a front seat view of a moose eating and wading about.

The rest of the day, we just paddled and portaged fast enough to stay ahead of the scout troop. We lost them around Trader Lake or so. We didn't stop for lunch today because we were concerned about finding a campsite now that we were back in the vicinity of Moose Lake. We reached Vera before 1pm to start searching for a site. The first 4 were full and we were pretty sure the western most one would be also. Before we could see if it was full, another group paddled past it and pulled even with us. They asked about the sites further west. We told them they were all taken but there was an empty one on Missionary. We continued paddling while they sat discussing amongst themselves. We rounded the corner and found the last site was empty! Hallelujah! We pulled up and then saw that the other group had followed behind us in hopes of getting that site. We felt bad and would have shared if they had asked, but it was still pretty early in the day and there were sites on further lakes.

A bit later we heard some thunder, prepped for rain, took a swim, and chowed down some much needed lunch. A gentle rain started around 2pm and continued for a few hours. The sun came out at dinnertime. As I was journaling in the tent, the second of my 2 pens ran out of ink. Bummer! I love journaling every eve. Just then, Stew came back from a walk about looking for tent stakes (we were on a roll finding lost ones this trip) and said, "Nature provides what we need." and handed me a pen he had found! What are the chances?

Distance: 9 miles Portages: 475 rods Time: 4 hours 10 minutes including 25 minutes of moose watching

~Kekekabic Lake, Pickle Lake, Spoon Lake, Dix Lake, Skoota Lake, Missionary Lake, Trader Lake, Vera Lake