Thursday, July 09, 2009

Sunny & Windy with scattered showers,

Strong winds out of the NE, Mid. 70’s Sunrise: 5:12, Sunset: 9:00

Total Miles Traveled: 8.17

Lakes Traveled: Gaskin, Jump, Allen, Horseshoe, and Caribou

I wake up at 5:30 and finish the last of my hash-browns. I look at the package of freeze dried eggs (fresh ones are gone) and realize I just can’t bring myself to eat them.

Bill and Brian are up early and we break camp at 8 with our goal to base camp all of Friday and get out of the BWCA early on Saturday. We head through a 33r, 24r, and a 50r with no problems at all as I single portage them all. We get into Horseshoe and are challenged by a beaver who kept slapping its tail at us as we pass by. CURSE MY CAMERA!

We make Caribou at 11:15 and begin to look for sites, after circling the entire lake, all but 3 are taken by base campers and the other sites are not worth staying 2 days on.

After debating our options, we end up portaging back into horseshoe and found a really nice site on the east shore near the portage campsite #677. The site is elevated from the shore with some good tent pads.

It even has one of those new fancy square latrines with a lid! We are camping in style now! We set up and relaxed. I continued to write in my journal and read a couple of more chapters of my book.

The wind picks up and begins to snap around my CSS tarp. I lace the windward face of the tarp down and that seems to help.

The sky begins to cloud over just as Brian starts to make his jambalaya. It rains enough to put out the fire out so we move the stove to under the tarp and finish our dinner. The rain stops and we all relax reading our books and watching the sunset behind the grey clouds. It turns out to be a comfortable night with the cloud cover holding down the heat of the day.