We had a nice breakfast at Jordans and hit the road. We arrived at the launch, loaded the canoe, and hit Snowbank. There was a decent chop on Snowbank and Angie and I had never really paddled together. We quickly got the rhythm and made good progress across Snowbank. I found it ironic that we were doing the most dangerous part of the trip when we were most green.

The portage from Snowbank to Disappointment was Angie's first portage ever. It was quite an introduction. The portage is long, rocky, and seems to be completely uphill. We were base camping on Disappointment and double portaging. The double was sort of nice so we could catch our breath and actually see the portage without looking through a 17 foot hat.

We were paddling Disappointment around 9:30 am on the Thursday before Memorial Day. We were surprised to pass 2 or 3 groups coming out of Disappointment. I thought that was strange day to leave the BW. But either way, Disappoint was nearly empty. We leisurely passed by many of the camp sites. The island site closest to the launch looked pretty nice but it was the first one we found and we decided to keep looking. We checked out a few more sites. I was disappointed to see so much damage to the other sites. There were many trees cut off at waist level and several trees chopped with axes at eye level.

Eventually, we went to the site on the southwest shore towards the middle of the lake. The site was perfect. It was off the beaten track and the site was pretty rustic. I think we were the first ones to use the site this season.

There was a large tree down in the middle of the best tent pad. We had to trim branches on the tree to make a path to the back half of the tent site. We found a flat spot and set up the tent.

I fished the afternoon and caught a few smallmouth. I got a 15” smallie on a Basstrix swimbait. It was my first real time fishing the swimbaits. I was pretty impressed. We ate the smallie with Cache Lake bread for dinner.

We had a nice fire and enjoyed our first night away from the hustle and bustle.