25th. I got up this morning to gray overcast. Last night we had “Whipper Wills” who sang their 4-note song over and over and over……. .. …..and then in the middle of the night they had their buddies come and join them in a late night Jamb-o-ree….. .over and Over and,,,you know! This is the only spot in the Canoe Country we have ever had these darn “Whipper Wills”…we have camped here 3 nights and had them every time. Anyway, after getting up I started a small fire and had coffee. Then I heard thunder rumbling to the west and I set up a rain-fly just in case it might rain. The thunder was getting closer… Then the rain started. I thought I was pretty clever sitting under the rain-fly with my little fire and coffee. Then the storm hit! Lightning, thunder, wind, it poured, it hailed ices the size of pennies. The wind caught the rain-fly and I had to hold on with both hands, the rain and hail came in sideways, pools formed on the ground. Thomas came out of the tent wearing his rain gear to report the water was coming in on one side of the tent. Wow! What a storm! Everything got wet or damp. The only dry spot was where my butt was under the tarp.. …I kept that spot dry but I was soaked. 30 minutes later the sun came out, another beautiful day in Quetico. I dried out a few things and made breakfast. We had peasant eggs and hash browns with leftover Walleye fillets. We did the dishes and went over to the little waterfall in the bay behind camp. We caught a bunch of Smallmouth Bass just below the falls and then returned to camp to pack and write a note for the message jar. We returned the jar to it’s cairn in the woods. Then we loaded up and paddled out to the left hand point of the bay and started trolling for trout. We both had Rapala Deep Tail Dancers on, mine was Purplesent and Thomas’ was Perch color. No sooner had we started trolling than Thomas had one on his line. It took quite a while for him to bring it in and we couldn’t find the net, it was in the bottom of the gear pack. Thomas did land this Lake Trout without a net. It was a beautiful 7-9 Lbs. fish and we decided that it was too big for just the 2 of us to eat, so Thomas let him go. We continued to troll and Thomas hooked another smaller one that flipped off the barbless hooks right beside the canoe. We put up our poles and decided to continue our travels. We headed south on McIntyre towards the portages into Sarah Lake. The weather was sunny and had turned hot and humid after the morning storm. As we approached the end of McIntyre we discussed twhich portage to take and we decided to try the “Wall Portage” this time, we had taken the alternative portage last time through here. The “Wall” portage turned out to be not so bad as we were going down hill and we had seen steeper portages like the one into Little Gratton. We met a group of Scouts on this portage who were going up it and they were complaining and steating. We continued down Sarah and were looking for a lunch campsite and found one about half way down the lake at a narrows. We had a pleasant lunch. It was warm and sunny then we heard thunder from the west. Here came a huge dark thunder storm right over us. We got out the rain gear and tarps and covered our stuff as best we could. Thomas and I crawled under a tarp and waited out the squall. When it lessened we came out and looked around. Then to the west came more dark storm, this time with lightning striking the ground. Thomas tied a little tarp between 2 trees and we hunkered down under it. The rain poured down, it blotted out the view of the lake it was so hard. We got soaked, there was no way to stay dry. I had water running down the inside of my rain jacket. Then the lightning strikes got close with one just to the west of us and then to the east…..Booom!!…! 15 minutes later the sun came out and we were back in the canoe headed south.

We didn’t know how far we could get this day, especially with all the rain delays. In front of us was a particularly difficult set of portages first into Side Lake through a grassy river with lots of loading and un-loading. Then came “Heart Attack Hill” which not only had a steep hill but also was brushy and had some “Moose Mud” too. This portage was particularly poignant because of my heart attack in 2007 and was on my mind. Then came the two small portages in and out of the ponds before Isabella. These two were bad with mud and brush and downed trees. We finally made it to Isabella Lake! We found the nice campsite at the narrows empty and grabbed it. We had a beaver swim across the lake in front of us and slap his tail 3 or 4 times. Later he swam right by us and we took pictures of him. We set up camp and made dinner and hit the sack. We had a long and eventful day.

26th. I got up to clear skies with dew from overnight. I made a little campfire and coffee and wrote of yesterday’s adventures. We thought this campsite would have lots of traffic but the only traffic has been the beaver and a loon so far. We fixed breakfast and packed up ready to head for Bayley Bay of Basswood Lake for our last campsite of the trip. Little puffy clouds are building to the west. We saw a couple of parties of 2 &4 paddle by, as we were packing. We headed down to the east end of Isabella and made the portage into the river flowing into Basswood. Somehow this portage has gotten messed up and we took the wrong fork and went steeply up and then down through a bunch of brush and muck and then back to the old portage and river. With the high water we were able to paddle all the way to Basswood through rapids and 1 beaver dam pull through.

We entered The North Bay of Basswood Lake and turned right to paddle down that shore till we were directly across and closest to Bear Island and the portage into Burke Lake. Then we paddled across this big reach of lake without getting turned around like we did in 2005. When we got towards the backside of Bear Island we ran into a party fishing. They asked where we came in from and we answered; McAree, they said isn’t that a long way? And we said “Sorta”…then we asked where the portage to Burke was and they pointed it out. Now we were going up-stream against the currant with a couple of smallish but rocky portages in and out of a small stream with one rapid we waded through. Burke is where we got bind bound back in 93, but this day was hot and sunny with a slight breeze for the long paddle across Burke. This brought us to the famous “Yellow Brick Road” portage over to Bayley Bay of Basswood Lake. Thomas had talked of switching and having me carry the canoe on this portage. So I carried the canoe and Thomas took pictures. 84 rods and sandy with hardly any stones and no mud. I think this is the easiest portage in Quetico. We decided to hold off lunch till we found a campsite. It was hot and humid at the end of the “Yellow Brick Road” so Thomas went swimming on the sandy beach. We then loaded the canoe and headed down Bayley Bay looking for our last campsite. We passed a couple of occupied sites, and finally found one before Inlet Bay. We set up camp and had a late lunch of Chili (cooked on the stove) with crackers. Then we both took a nap in the tent even though it was hot and humid, it felt good to lie down. After 6PM it started cooling down and the loons started to sing. Also we can hear the distant motorboats on the US side of the lake. We heard a radio playing for a while..Country western music…civilization draws near. It is Japanese night and we had beef teriyaki and a pouch of tuna from Fred Meyers from home. The tuna was good but the teriyaki dinner was foul, neither one of us could finish our portion. We had a berry cobbler that was good, then off to the tent for a little reading and sleep.

27th. I awoke in the night to a snorting noise. Thomas said it was a deer and that it came back later in the night and snorted and stomped its hooves. I had a dream of a bear ripping open the tent because ZI had the last Snickers Bar by my head…Ug! So we woke up and I had a small fire and coffee and then fixed the last pancakes and a western omelet. We did the dishes and made sure we had all our stuff in our pack and all Jordan’s stuff in their packs. It had been overcast all morning. We loaded up and headed for Prairie Portage. It started sprinkling half way across Inlet Bay and we put on our rain gear. We made it to Prairie Portage and took pictures of the Quetico sign and went to the Quetico Store and bought shirts and hats. Then we crossed the portage to the Sucker Lake side. We were 2 hours early so we sat in the rain..under a birch tree with thunder, lightning and rain off and on. There seemed to be far fewer people coming through this year compared to 2005. We amused ourselves looking at the dam and the high water in the falls and creek. Then there were a few groups that came in, boy scouts and a father & son group from Ohio who had been up Agnes way. I talked to them about good places to eat in Ely, and told them about the Ely Steak House. Then our tow from LaTourrell’s showed up, he got slowed down from the lightning and rain. We enjoyed the tow down the Moose chain and passed some people who left us at Prairie Portage earlier. Jordan’s van was waiting for us at LaTourrell’s and we piled in and whisked back to the outfitters base. We check out with Mark and headed into town and checked in at our motel the “Adventure Inn” Nice!! After showering and spiffing up we headed to the Ely Steak House for a great dinner. We saw our friends from Ohio who we had talked to earlier and the Journeyman from the BWCA.com showed up and we arraigned to meet later to go over our maps. Later Journeyman did show up and we had a great time passing on information on the lakes we just came out from.

All in all this was probably the best canoe trip I can remember, we had a great time! Experienced solitude for 6 days! Caught a ton of fish! Saw a lot of new territory! Had all kinds of weather. We couldn’t asked for anything more.And had ten great days just being father and son.. 28th. We left town early and drove back to Minneapolis in our rental car. We made the drive fine and our flights back to the west coast were on time. We made it back to home by 11 PM Minnesota time. I want to thank all the people that helped us with information especially Stu and QP and all the contributers on the BWCA.com site. Thanks fishguts

Thanks Again! fishguts