I woke up about 4:00 in the morning at our island campsite on Carp Lake. It was the last night of our trip, and after a while I realized I was not going to fall back to sleep and thought about getting up. But I decided to stay in the tent, looking up through the mesh at the silhouette of pines and the stars beyond, until the first hint of dawn, which was still a couple hours away. For a time I could hear some animal chewing on something nearby. I knew that if I unzipped the tent door to investigate, the animal would be gone before I ever saw it. So I just enjoyed the sense of the natural world going on around me. My guess is that it was a snowshoe hare, but that is just a guess.

Finally round 6:00 the sky showed a hint more light and I got up and started making coffee. While the java was brewing I got out the tripod and took this picture of our nearly empty food pack dangling above -

Looking east drinking coffee as dawn broke -

Once it really got light David got up too. I think I'm enjoying a second cup of joe here -

A beaver swam by, crows cawed raucously, a loon and a herring gull floated out in the bay, an osprey whistled loudly as it flew from the south side of the lake over our campsite and on to the north. It was a beautiful morning in canoe country -

After the sun had been up a while, heavy fog drifted in. The picture below was taken more or less from the same place as the one above, but half an hour later -

David filtering water in the fog -

The herring gull who had been floating in the bay decided to come in closer to one of the nearby rocky islets, and I took its portrait through the fog -

We could tell this fog would lift as suddenly as it came. Sure enough, by the time we were ready to leave our campsite around 10:00, it was bright and sunny again. Looking back at our island site as we paddled away -

We rounded the point that separated our campsite's bay from the main part of Carp and noticed a canoe turned upside down on shore at a hidden campsite. We had no idea someone else was camped just around the corner.

Out on the main expanse of Carp Lake, a bright summer day was developing in mid-September -

As always we scanned the marshy shores for moose, still with no luck -

Before long, we squeezed through the narrows into the western bay of Carp, where the international boundary passes through. Suddenly there were other canoes coming and going along the border route. A few minutes later we landed at the portage to Birch Lake. This was the first portage we crossed at the beginning of this trip eight days ago, going in the other direction. Now as we carried our gear back over, we marveled at what a wide highway it is -

There were several more canoes out on the water when we launched into Birch, but soon we had the lake to ourselves again. This picture is heading north through the narrows into the main part of Birch Lake -

Out on the main lake we encountered a southwest headwind -

We made a beeline for the 5-rod liftover from Birch to Sucker. We had not taken this shortcut before because of the need to check in at Prairie Portage. But if you are going directly from Birch Lake to Moose Landing, or vice versa, it cuts up to two miles off the route. We approached the short portage about noon -

As I carried the canoe across, I ran into a group with all their gear right in the middle of the portage completely blocking the way. Fortunately there are two put-ins on the Sucker Lake side, so I veered off to the one they were not blocking. The group on the portage was looking very well-pressed and tidy and I figured they were just arriving for their wilderness trip. But as we loaded up and paddled off into Sucker Lake, a towboat arrived to pick them up and whisk them away. All I can say is that if your trousers have sharp-pressed creases in them at the end of a wilderness paddling trip AND you are blocking a portage, you are a bunch of complete losers.

We still had a headwind when we first got out on Sucker Lake, but then it got pretty squirrely south of the big western point and further down in Newfound and Moose Lakes. A few times the wind died altogether, like when we passed through the narrows from Sucker to Newfound. Without any wind, it was sweltering in the bright September sunshine.

Once on Newfound, we stopped at the tip of Horseshoe Island for lunch. This picture looks north the way we had just come -

As we finished off our peanut butter and jelly, a couple of canoes went by. You can just see one of them heading around the broad point further south on Newfound Lake in the picture below. They weren't the strongest paddlers, and we would pass them by a little later as we made our own way to Moose Landing -

We left Horseshoe Island at 1:00 and got to the landing about 2:00, having travelled 11.5 miles from our campsite in just under three hours (not counting the portages or lunch). Pretty good time, especially with the wind. We found a rock to hold the camera for an end-of-trip "group shot" -

After loading up the car in the blazing sunshine, we headed into Ely and found Barney Fife at the customs station. He was friendly (he recognizes us now) and thankfully businesslike, so we were soon on our way. Later that evening we met Ruthanne, Nick and Liddy at the Ely Steak House for dinner. The company was great. And I inhaled a rib-eye, fries, and several cold brews with no problem. After dinner, we stopped off with Nick and Liddy to greet Heather and Marshall as they arrived at their own northwoods home after a long drive from Iowa. It was fun to see everyone. Then it was back to the cabin for a good night's sleep in a real bed.

Around midnight we were awakened by wolves howling very close by. It sounded like they were just down at the dock. One pup in particular just kept bark-howling without pause for about a half hour, joined now and again by the rest of the pack as they moved north along the lake shore, echoed by intermittent loon calls, until finally the last howl was heard ringing in the distance far to the north. A fitting end to a great wilderness trip.

Up next . . . "Reflections"