The next day, after another blueberry pancake breakfast and a warm day ahead, we planned a trip over to Devil’s Cascade. While on the long portage to Lower Pauness we crossed paths with a group of 6. It seemed to be a mother with 5 kids. And one of the children was a toddler! I was impressed to say the least. They were better outfitted and organized than us.

I am not sure this toddler would appreciate what her mother was doing until she grows up and has children too, and looks back upon BWCA pictures!

We made a mental note to check up on them later – not that they needed us to.

Devil’s Cascade is where the Little Indian Sioux River runs through a little gorge and is quite thunderous when the water level is high. It is along the 160 rod portage from Lower Pauness to Loon Lake. It is well worth the time to explore. We thought about carrying the canoe and fishing the other side of the portage, but there is a steep incline to summit in the middle that would be a back breaker with our canoe.

At this summit there is a camp site which is part of the Superior Trail system and is situated near the edge of the ravine. I think it would be a fun place to camp. It is certainly not a place to camp with small children with a cliff being only steps away. It does have quite the view.

After spending a few hours around the cascades, we when back to Shell and portaged into Heritage Lake. We needed some fish for supper but the lake seemed empty of any fish. We went back to camp and hoped to catch something from shore before dark. This worked again and we had fish frying as the sun set.

As we were sitting by the fire enjoying some mudslides, we watched a large lightning storm to the north and hoped it would miss us. The lightning lit up the sky and revealed a nasty looking storm. We later found out there was tornadic activity. It went from calm, to windy, to batten down the hatches in minutes! We quickly tied our tarp over our tent and pitched it to the ground, to direct the wind over our tent. The tarp was one heavy item that we were now glad we brought (my lower quality tent would not have survived.) It was actually an exciting end to a great day!