Morning comes early in June this far north, but today it came with constant flashes of lightning and rumbles of distant thunder. I got out of my tent to video the incoming storm at 4:50 AM and while the rain and winds that followed for the next 3 hours were certainly not in my plans, the show nature put on before they hit was spectacular. Those not-flat tent pads on this site turned out to be exactly where heavy rain pooled, and I have a great video of the floor of my tent looking mysteriously similar to a water bed. But the water stayed outside where it was supposed to, so even that was kind of a fun discovery. A quote directly from my notes "Have you ever really lived if you've never done your business outdoors sitting on a wet toilet seat while its pouring and the wind is whipping through the trees above your head". The answer is no, you haven't!

I had planned to be on the water around 6:00 AM, but the storm delayed me a few hours, which meant I would be traveling during hotter hours of the day instead of early morning as I preferred. After the storm passed, it was dead calm with high humidity, and the temperatures starting edging back up quickly. I paddled through Vern to the portage into Juno. Here you have two choices- load and unload twice and paddle the beaver pond or take the portage trail all the way around the east side of the pond. I decided on the latter, but either way this portage is tougher than its length would lead you to believe, and even more so on a foot that didn't appreciate the rocky path. It would however be nothing compared to portages of other days to come. I continued through Juno, caught a couple more small pike while trolling, and made my way to the Juno-Brule portage. This 65 rod portage would normally be a walk in the park, but my foot was achy by then, and the heat and humidity were not helping matters. I wasn't miserable, but I wasn't truly appreciating the natural world around me the way I normally would. I was just going through the motions. I pushed on anyway, knowing I needed to get to Brule while the winds were still down to have any chance of getting to one of the Temperance Lakes that were my goal for the day. I paddled around Jack Mock Point and followed the south shoreline of Brule to the west towards South Temperance Lake. The clear and deeper water of Brule was much cooler than Vern had been, and I did stop periodically to get out of the canoe and dip in the water to cool off. Somewhere along that stretch I ran out of filtered water and stopped at a site along that shore (#955?) and filtered enough to refill both of my empty 32oz Nalgene bottles and drink the equivalent of a 3rd while sitting there relaxing. Over the course of that day, I drank seven 32oz Nalgene bottles of water- almost a full 2 gallons!

After my refueling and refreshing effort, I just wanted to get to a site and be done travelling for the day. I paddled the rest of the way through Brule and into South Temperance. It can be challenging to find a site on South Temperance, but when I saw the easternmost site was still unoccupied at 2:00 PM I practically jumped out of my seat with happiness. To be honest, it's not a great site, but I didn't care. I was exhausted, overheated, and needed a place to dry out all the gear still wet from the morning storms, and the site was more than adequate to address those issues. I did fish the main part of South Temperance around all the islands for a couple of hours with no luck, which is now the 2nd time this lake has skunked me. I chalked it up to "too hot even for the fish" and went swimming instead. Once again, a way better choice than sweating in the canoe seat, but it also meant a 2nd night with no fish for dinner. Even though I had plenty of food, I was a bit disappointed as I had hoped that an early June trip would be full of fish catching. Some things just don't go as planned.

I returned from fishing to a camp of dry gear (YAY!) and spent a couple hours of the evening just relaxing and planning. With a big day ahead of me, I wanted to be well rested and I was in the tent well before 9:00 PM. I happily welcomed a night of "sleeping with the top down" (no rain fly) since there was no rain in the forecast, which was pretty necessary due to how stifling hot the tent would have been. Doubts about how the next day was going to play out with my injured foot vs. tough portages were definitely entering my mind. Those doubts, combined with the prospect of another day of hot and humid weather were dragging me down mentally. I just kept telling myself I had set a goal and that I was going to give it my best effort to reach that goal, and fell asleep ready to do just that.