Monday, August 13, 2007 Today was to be the beginning of the end for our adventure. We had decided yesterday to camp on Angleworm tonight so that we could bust out early Tuesday morning and get home to our wives and 13 month old boys as early as possible. We got started packing around 1000 and were on the water headed out at about noon or so. We left that site as clean as we could and with a few site improvements made as well. I made two "log-end tables" as we call them in the couch's log ends closest the fire. You can do this by making a down cut halfway through the log about every four inches. Make four of these cuts and then get your hatchet and a good sized hammer stone. Using your hatchet as a chisel, holding your hatchet at the end of the log parallel to the bottom edge of the saw cut four inches in, you give it a good whack with your hammer stone. Repeat across the end of the log until you knock out the four inch top section of the log. Do this three more times and then smooth the surface of the table with your hatchet, using it as an adze. You will have yourself a 16 inch by 6-8 inch flat surface that comes in mighty handy and that is much cleaner than the dirt ground of camp. You will also find that it keeps hot pots, plates, and coffee cups hot longer because it insulates the bottom instead of sucking out the heat like dirt. We also left my signature "Guitar String Clothesline" and some homemade clothes pins. For the clothesline you attach one end to the first tree and then stretch it to the other target tree. About 3 feet from the second tree, make a loop knot in the rope. You will take the rope around the tree and come back to that loop knot, threading the rope though it. You have effectively just made a pulley out of rope and from here can stretch the heck out of your clothesline. To make clothespins you can just take a 1/2 inch stick about 9 inches long and split it right down the center, halfway down the stick. Remove the hatchet and now you have a clothespin. You DO NOT need nails in the wilderness if you are equipped with the right knot tying skills. Nails kill trees slowly but surely. Also, don’t use green sticks for the clothespins. The last thing that we left was a small cross stuck in the fire grate, to signify that this is God's Living Cathedral here and it was mighty good to us here at Beartrap Lake. While we canoed out of Thunder Lake we ran into a party of seven and they told us they were headed to Beartrap for a couple of nights and hoped the site was open. We assured them it was better than ever and definitely unoccupied. They had told us they were avid BWJ readers and I shared my maps with them, as we would not need them any more and I had them committed to memory. They thanked us for the fishing report and went about their merry way. It feels so good to assist others in achieving a great trip. Moving out of Gull to the "Honest Hike" into Home Lake we ran into 4 young men on a canoe trip. It was a first summer trip to BWCA for 3 of them and the third trip for the leader who was 18 years of age. We gave them as much as we could in site/fishing knowledge for the area and sent them on their way. It is an encouragement to see these youngsters getting hooked into the wilderness for life early on. We stayed at the site they told us they stayed at and my only hope for this party of four is that they gain a little bigger respect for this Holy place before there trip is over. I'm sure they will and we made sure to erase any trace of their presence from that site. We went out for "one last cast" a couple hours before dark and ended up catching a few smaller walleyes in the mouth of a cove tucked back in a bay close to a couple of islands and directly in front of a campsite. On the way into this spot we picked up a 20 inch northern in between the islands and the mainland. We returned to camp and Oscar packed everything up for our early departure the next day while I cooked dinner. It looked like it might rain, so we used the tent this night.