I got up around 7:00 to 44 degrees. Not quite cold enough to turn on the heat in the tent, but it was close! I had breakfast and made my lunch before hitting the water. The water was perfectly calm and the fog rising as I got Murphy down to the lake. 

I heard a lot of boats out on the lake as early as 6:00 and they all seemed to be headed the same way I wanted to go. I didn’t think that a Monday would be that busy, but the boat traffic was constant all morning. I paddled over to the Newton Lake portage, there were two boats at the landing putting on their portage wheels. Seeing as I'm daytripping, I blew past them onto and over the portage and found two guys in a canoe over on the other side. We leapfrogged each other all the way down Newton Lake, which turned out to be a long paddle. When we finally got to the portage into Pipestone Bay, the armada was even bigger. One of the boats at the Newton portage had passed us and was there, another boat was catching us, and there were a couple of canoes already there. I waited for one of the groups to clear the portage and then moved through as fast as I could, only to find no parking on the other side of the portage, there were more boats and canoes spread all over the place. I found a spot over on the very edge of the landing and got in and out of the way in a hurry. I paddled all the way up to the falls and took some pictures, they were definitely more impressive than Newton Falls.

Unfortunately almost the entire area around the falls was very shallow. I fished around and found one deep hole, but only caught a few rock bass so I headed to the opposite shore that went straight uphill and climbed up the cliff to get some pictures and video of the falls from the top. As I climbed up, I kept thinking that this is one of those activities that I really shouldn’t be doing when on a solo trip. 

Once I got down off the cliff, I paddled over to the closest campsite and had some lunch while watching more canoes going in both directions. From there I fished the deep hole along the far shoreline, catching a few rock bass that should have been walleye and slowly headed back to the portage. I ended up fishing longer than I wanted to simply because there was a constant flow of people over that stupid portage. When I did head over the portage there were three canoes on one side and four on the other. I made it a point to be the last one in and the first one out. I got really tired and hot paddling back down Newton Lake. It was probably close to 80 and there wasn’t much of a breeze for once. I stopped at Newton Falls, had the rest of my lunch, then filled my anchor bag with rocks and went out fishing some more. I caught 8 nice smallmouth over on the west side of the current. The whole time I was there the traffic was constant. There was no time that I could not see another canoe somewhere on the lake. Just as I was leaving about 10 guys showed up and were fishing from shore. I talked to one of them when I got on the portage, it was their first day at Vermillion Community College and this was a class activity. They were given one of about 4 different outdoor activities to go do. In addition to the guys fishing, there were even more people on the portage that must have been there for the same reason, they all looked like they were out for a walk in the park. I made it back to camp around 3:15, got cleaned up, and drove to town for bait, booze, and some gloves. My new paddle was giving me blisters so I bought a pair of biking gloves used by BMX kids. They turned out to be perfect. They were padded on the inside, fingerless, and just netting on the outside so they covered my blisters, didn’t get my hands all sweaty, and dried very quickly. Back at camp around 5 for chicken tacos and then got everything ready for an early departure in the morning. There was a sign on the bathroom doors announcing a stargazing event at the boat dock so around 9:30 or so, I headed down there. It turns out a professor of astronomy from Arizona State was there I was the only one there with him that night so I got a one hour personal lecture. I learned a bunch from him, including that he probably went to high school with mom!

Portages – 4 portages totaling about 360 rods, plus up and down from camp. Miles paddled - 11 Weather – sunny and warm, lo 44, hi 76, no wind.