Day 1: Start at Jordan’s Outfitters and end at Horse Lake camp site:

We woke around 7am and had a great pancake breakfast with Jordan's secret pancake recipe. Then, we piled into Jordan’s vans and headed to EP23.

We arrived at the EP and unloaded our stuff. As the Jordan van pulled away, we realized that we alone in the woods and the trip really was going to happen.

The portage to the entry was easy. We loaded the canoes and pushed off. The paddle down the river was exactly what I expected of the BW: The water was cool, the air was fresh, and the paddling was easy. When the creek opened into Mudro, the feeling continued.

We paddled lazily across Mudro. We found the portage and made the portage to Sandpit Lake. The portage was a tough one to be our first one. It was short but included a pretty good climb and had several ankle-turning rocks.

Once in Sandpit, we decided to fish a bit. Stickman caught the first fish. He doesn’t fish and said something about blind squirrels and acorns. It turned out to be the only fish he caught during the entire trip.

We fished Sandpit for about an hour. We caught several nice smallmouth and largemouth bass. The most successful rig was leaches under slip bobbers.

We started to get concerned about finding a camp site on Horse so we wrapped things up and found the portage. This portage was long but wide with a boardwalk at Tin Can Mike. We paddled quickly across Tin Can Mike, found the next portage, and made our way to Horse.

The first few sites on Horse were full and we were starting to get concerned. We made our way across the lake. We were hoping the island site on the north end of Horse. We assumed it would be full too. We kept checking with binoculars and could not see any signs of tents. So we paddled on. We made it to the camp site and found it vacant. We were pretty excited since it seemed to be a perfect site: away from crowds, open with a nice breeze to control bugs, a nice rock “beach”, several good tent sites, etc.

We settled in. We set up camp, pumped water, fished a bit, and relaxed. It was great to be in the woods….

We had a nice swim off our rock beach and put on dry clothes. The water was perfect: clear and not to warm, not too cold.

We had steak for dinner that night. They were cooked right on the grate and tasted great.

After a few Maker’s Marks and BW water, we called it a night…