Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Today the plan was to just stay on Wine and just explore the lake and relax. That's exactly what we did. Yet another beautiful day. First off we paddled down to check out the SW lobe and the campsite located there. This side of the lake is very shallow and you can see bottom most of the time. There are even a few spots where weeds were starting to pop through. We found the campsite.

It was the least desirable of the 3 on this lake. But it is still workable in the highly unlikely scenario that the other 2 are taken. We then worked ourselves around to the eastern lobe and checked out that site as well. Yesterday coming back from our day trip we noticed it was empty. Not on par with our island camp, but it was a very nice site.
Kelly suggested I try some fishing. I cast a bit from shore, then we went out onto the lake. No sooner had we got out onto the lake when clouds rolled in and it started raining. Since it was so nice when we left we didn't bring our rain gear along. We tried to tough it out for awhile, but the rain persisted. We started heading back for camp. I guess fishing wasn't meant to happen on this trip? Predictably, the rain quit just as we reached our island. Not that we hadn't noticd already? But we decided to go back in and enjoy everything this fabulous island site had to offer. We set about gathering firewood and making ready for our last nite on the "Isle of Fine Wine White Pines". There were several large white pines on this island. Enough so that we didn't even bother setting up the tarp. And though it was hot out for the duration of our stay, we had ample shade. It was evident that recently some people had chopped of some of the lower branches of these impressive towers. While I'll admit I don't lose sleep over this, it's still sad to see. However, one of these trees gave testament that this is a practice that has been handed down through several generations. I doubt seriously that this had happened in my lifetime. There were branches sawed off over 30+ feet up this old tree.
As we were sitting around relaxing a thought came to mind. We still had a few beers left that were at room temperature. Instead of trying to sink them in the lake. Which was very shallow here anyways. Why don't we quick run over to Mug lake and grab some ice. So we set out to do just that.[paragraph break] Kelly put his knewly claimed hatchet to a most meritorious use. In no time at all we had filled my small collapsible cooler. We paddled back to Wine. We let a few of the beers chill while we made and ate our supper. Nothing quite like an ice cold beer this deep into the wilderness!
We polished off the remaining beverages and enjoyed a nice long relaxing campfire on this our last night on "The Isle of Fine Wine White Pines".

Wine Lake, Mug Lake