Monday, June 22, 2020 - We started the day with breakfast and were blessed with a Merganser family swimming by (my favorite picture of the trip). Fortunately, I am lucky with the camera and a few of the hundreds of pictures turned out ok. We hit the water by 8:30 and were soon to the south side of Insula (the burn area). Peter let me work on my navigation skills, and I only took us in the wrong direction once, but quickly corrected course and we reached the portage to Hudson. May last picture of the trip is us going over the portage.

After traveling through Hudson, we stopped for a quick snack on the Lake Four side (a small pond) and we saw a group paddle around the island, go by us, and keep going. It appears they thought we were on a campsite and ended up doing a full circle plus. Fortunately it was a small pond. We made it through lake four and when we hit lake three, Peter asked if I could paddle on the right side. I switched, took two strokes and said “no” as I switched back to the left side. We continued on lake three to campsite 2220, where we stopped to filter some water (sure wish I had my Sawyer filtered bottle to drink as I go) and stretch our legs. We contemplated staying for the night and paddling out on Tuesday. Unfortunately, we made the wrong decision and paddled on. On Lake Two, we paddled on top of a slightly submerged table rock and were stuck. I froze, not knowing what to do, and Peter said “don’t do anything, I will get us off”. Being the nimble one, he was able to free us without an unplanned swim and soon we were on lake one. Again we discussed staying for the night, but we were so close that we just pushed on, getting to EP30 just after 7:30pm – 11 hours. Our trip was a total of 15.7 miles paddling and 2 miles of portages, which had an estimated time of 7.5 hours, and I thought we were cruising. Too much enjoying the journey and not enough going hard. We loaded up and drove to EP27 to get Peter’s truck, loaded everything in the right vehicles and headed for home. We learned our decision was bad as Peter pulled over and took a long nap before getting home, and I stopped at a rest area outside of Grand Rapids and slept for two hours, getting home just after 3am. Last lesson of the trip, “it really sucks driving in the dark, and extends travel time driving 40 mph through deer country!” PS – Lesson didn’t stick, as in 2021, we did the same thing, paddle from Fraser to EP27 and drive all the way home with a nap in Grand Rapids – some things never change!