Tuesday, September 02, 2008 I’m up at 6:15AM and hobble out of the tent. My lower back has stiffened up during the night and it was an effort getting upright. I head down to the lake and get water for coffee and for making Gatorade for our nalgenes. After moving around for a bit, my back loosens up and I’m feeling pretty good. The really great news is that my shoulder is not bothering me at all. The rotator cuff surgery I had in mid April seems to have been successful, although I just finished physical therapy a week ago. The doctor said I’d be OK for this trip, but I was viewing this trip as a good test of where I was. So far, so good. Jamie is up by 6:30AM and starts cooking breakfast. This is our only “cooked” breakfast of the trip: Bacon, eggs, hash browns. I start taking down the tent while she cooks. Breakfast is outstanding! We clean up, pack up and are on the water by 9AM. While packing, a couple of Grey Jays fly into our site and scour the firepit looking for any leftovers. Jamie snaps a few pictures. Today should be a fairly easy day. We negotiate the 23 rod portage into the Boulder River and the 65 rod portage into Boulder Bay with no problems. We paddle Lac La Croix in constant rain and occasional heavy wind, making our way to the Bottle Portage. At the far end of Bottle portage, there is a group that is just getting ready to leave (headed to Iron Lake). There are two areas they can take off from and have chosen the one to our left. It is apparent that the water is very shallow and very muddy. They have a choice: pushing the canoes out in shin deep mud and getting in the canoe once it can float; or trying to get in the canoe first and using the paddles to push through the mud. They opt for the latter, which appears to work OK. When we return, with our second load, we decide to have a quick lunch before heading on. We eat our summer sausage wraps adjacent to the foul smelling bog we are about to navigate. Jamie walks out as far as she can (probably 20 feet or so) and gets in the canoe (no easy task). I push a bit further out and then get in the canoe. We are almost floating, but need to paddle through a short shallow area before we reach clean water. We hang our feet out of the canoe to clean the mud off. As we reach the entry to Iron Lake, we are initially concerned. It is a sea of boulders and it appears as though we’ll need to carry everything across. As we paddle a bit further, we can see a small opening where water is flowing out. It looks navigable and as we are able to paddle through. It is drizzling fairly steady and as we enter Iron Lake, the rain picks up. We are soon paddling in a downpour, but it is actually an enjoyable paddle. We intend to head down the western shore and grab the 2nd or 3rd site. The 2nd site is occupied and we head for the 3rd site, on a south facing point. We paddle back and forth looking for the site, but no landing is apparent. Eventually, we dock the canoe on one side of the point and Jamie climbs up to have a look. There is a site up there, but the logistics of landing our canoe and carrying gear up to the site is such that we decide to travel on. We are intending on spending 3 nights here and don’t want to fight with this landing for 3 days. We continue on and head for the island campsite at the southern end of Iron. We locate the campsite and it is really nice. I would call this a 4 ½ to 5 star site. We are extremely happy to find this site unoccupied. Well, almost unoccupied. On a stump in camp, there sits the skull of a deer, complete with antlers…which my daughter promptly dubs “skeletor”. Skeletor becomes our campsite companion for the next two days and I notice Jamie seems to have an abnormal attraction to him. We set up camp during a break in the rain. It is starting to get colder and Jamie starts a campfire, no small feat after all the rain we’ve had. We change into dry clothes and have a supper of Polish Sausage. We clean up and head into the tent. Wind and rain would have made fishing miserable tonight and we are tired from a fairly long day of travel. We make notes in our journal, read by flashlight and fall asleep. Jamie wakes me up at 10:30PM and is not feeling well. We go outside and walk about 30 yards from the tent where she throws up dinner. She immediately feels better. As we walk back to the tent, I hear a sound and shine my flashlight…right on skeletor. We have a good laugh at that, then go back in the tent and fall in to peaceful sleeps.