Tuesday, June 09, 2009 Day four. The early start and coolness of the shade made a long portage much less tedious. There is a picturesque falls that I caught Terry taking a picture of from a spot that actually was more precarious than it looks. He is a real “tree hugger”. The portage ended with a mirror finished river and a crew that was eager to get moving along. We weren't sure just how far we'd get today but figured when we hit Clear Lake we'd start looking for a nice site and see what happened. The wind had begun to whip up a steady blow by now and as we toured the lake every site was occupied except for the one just to the left of the portage as one enters the lake from our portage. It didn't take long to see how exposed we were to the wind. Three pretty nice tent pads were found and the tents went up but the fire grate and cooking area were going to be a problem with the wind. We engineered a wind break out of a tarp that worked very well and had a comfortable time working at the fire grate.

This site was a hub of turtle activity. All day long there were turtles hugging the shoreline. At night they came ashore and deposited eggs wherever they could find a spot. Most found a sandy place but some laid them right on the rocks. All in all an interesting aspect of nature we don’t see that often.

I will also add that the site was the hub of canoe activity the rest of the day. All the sites were occupied and many groups would come through, circle around and move on. I spotted 2 groups of four canoes each and we spotted a huge armada of about 9 canoes that circled the lake once and ended up moving toward the 175 rod portage that heads NW out of Clear Lake. There were many other single canoes looking for a site also.

That evening we decided to push on through Clear Lake in the morning and get back on the Kawishiwi River.