We woke up late, had a big breakfast of eggs and toasted bagels and hit the water to do a tour of Burnt Lake. While touring the south portion of the lake it was sunny and fairly calm. We took out at the 240 rod portage to Kelly and walked it just to see what it was like. We had no idea which way we were going to go on our trip because one of our group had a recently tweaked knee and another a VERY stiff neck.

The tour of the northern part of the lake turned cold and windy as we had a bit of a fight against the wind getting back to the camp site.

We set out the food packs and began the process of making a dinner of BBQ chicken and a big salad. Just after adding the BBQ sauce, Kevin headed out to get some water. He turned to head out, heard a noise, saw the bear, screamed and a blur of activity followed.

The 6' bear was about 3’ away from a food pack when Kevin screamed. He picked up the pack and ran. We picked up rocks, chased him while throwing them, but he had what he wanted and was not going to put it down.

None of us had seen a bear before in the wild and knew little about them. One thing we DID know was that they were NOT just talked about to add to the lore of Boundary Waters.

We ate our dinner standing, and shaking, cleaned up REALLY good and hung our food.

Just after dinner, Mike needed to use the throne, sat down and decided to go elsewhere when he heard the bear eating our food not more than 40 feet away!

Later we all went back and he was still eating our food, snapping the plastic containers in the process.

We went to bed at dark. Soon we heard the snorting. The bear was in camp again! Not having a clue on what to do we, did nothing except shake and keep swallowing because our hearts were in our throats.

The bear nuzzled my mess kit, knocked it to the ground which made a lot of noise then must have left because we did not hear from him the rest of the night.