Friday, July 03, 2009 We got up early today as we wanted to get to Oyster and get a specific campsite. I also knew we had our longest portage (310 rods) of the trip ahead of us. We hit the water by 7:30 and quickly reached the portage. The gents we met the day before on the portage from Little Shell had told us there was a submerged part of the portage to Oyster where we would have to paddle across the swamp for about 60 yards adding additional time to an already long portage.
We seemed to finally be better organized and Maureen and Keegan were off quickly. By the time Raleigh and I were saddled up a young family arrived at the portage heading in the same direction. They mentioned they were targeting the same site we wanted to get to that day. We dropped our packs at half way and headed back for the canoes.
Raleigh’s youth enabled him to create a gap on me as we headed out for our full leg of the portage with the canoes. I have notoriously bad ankles and am usually pretty diligent but apparently I day dreamed briefly as I soon found myself on the ground with the canoe on top of me. I had heard the pop and tear and knew I had done some damage to my right ankle. After some colorful self expression I wrapped it with a bandana and managed to get the canoe back up and limped down the trail. I finally reached the end of the portage and sunk my ankle in the nice cool water of Oyster which felt great. It had started to swell and bit but not much I could do about it now so after a good 10 minute soaking I decided it was time to load up and paddle.
We really wanted to get campsite 1773 and the young family following us was arriving at the portage end so we hit the water with some enthusiasm. We decided to split up as we expected Oyster to be pretty active this being July 4th weekend (thankfully I was wrong in that regard). Raleigh and Maureen went straight to 1773 while Keegan and I went to check out 1782. To my surprise 1782 was open and appeared to be a really nice site but Maureen found 1773 open so we decided to stay there.
This is an awesome camp site! We quickly setup camp, ate some lunch and everyone just relaxed for a while. The weather was splendid and not a bug to be found. We eventually hit the water for some more fishing. Keegan and I tried our hand in various places trolling for some lake trout to no avail, I am pretty confident we just were not deep enough and with no electronics we were fishing blind so to speak. Maureen and Raleigh had some good luck with the smaillies and pike so we enjoyed some fish with our beef stroganoff which is Keegan’s favorite camping dinner. The evening was wonderful as we had a nice fire and sat around reading until dark.
We had a quick discussion before turning in for the night and Maureen was pretty adamant that she wanted to stay put for another night. She was a bit tired of tearing down and setting up and really liked this campsite and the beauty of Oyster. Our original plan had been to get over to Agnes on Saturday to shorten up the last days paddle which we considered to be a bit of a challenge in its own right. Adding the distance from Oyster to Agnes concerned me a bit (my V-6 in the bow was showing some wear and tear). Knowing that making Mom completely happy was really high on the list of priorities we all agreed to enjoy Oyster an extra day and to suck it up and take on the challenge of getting out to EP 16 by 2pm on Sunday (our pickup time) without any complaints. We headed to the tents as a bevy of loons lulled us to sleep.