Monday, May 31, 2010 Planned on sticking closer to home today. Gonna take the advice of the nice folks who helped us on the Monument portage and head up to Lake of the Clouds. Once again the day started out nicely. Save for our resident ravens bickering yet again. We paddled past the cliffs and ravens to the portage to Lunar. There is a little waterfall very near this portage. It may have been a little more impressive if it wasn't so dry. The Lunar portage starts out with a significant climb before leveling off into a fairly decent trail. It then passes an old beaver pond. Then the fun really begins. The trail climbs steeply up an incredibly rocky "gorge" with plenty of branches hanging down across the trail to add to the inconvenience. There is what sounds like an underground brook running just below the trail. Kinda cool. Finally emerging out of the brush and rocks we encountered a group heading towards Cherry and points beyond. A father & 3 sons were headng south. Eventually wanting to go from Sea Gull to J.A. Paulson lake. We talked for a bit, then headed our seperate ways. We made short work of Lunar. If not for the lake being so small, the portage to Lake of the Clouds may have been a bit more difficult to locate? A somewhat overgrown trail climbed up 10 rods to Lake of the Clouds. Lake of the Clouds is a little gem. We trolled rapalas around for awhile as a gentle breeze cooled us. Turned out to be a beautiful day. As promised, soon there was a tug at the end of my line. My first laker of the day was of perfect eating size so I put him on the stringer. We had lunch!
Later we headed over to the Rivalry lake portage trail. We could see the cliffs from out on the lake. The trail itself was quite overgrown. There were a couple af trees down across the trail that looked to be trouble with packs and canoes. But the folks we met earlier had come this way, they got through. The cliffs were impressive as the trail followed along near them. At the Rivalry lake landing, there were a few sizable stones that looked just like concrete. We went back out to Lake of the Clouds and fished for awhile longer before heading back to Cherry to eat lunch.
Even before this trip, Vickie had admitted she is not a big fan of eating fish. I told her lake trout have a different taste than a walleye or northern. She agreed to give it a try. So while I was cleaning the fish she got the fire started & was getting the mashed potatoes and fixings ready to go. Somewhile later after we had finished our meal, Vickie commented that the lake trout meal was better than the ribeyes we'd had on our first night. The only thing she didn't like was the skin. Which she just ate around. I told her if we can catch some more when we get to Kekekabic, we'll have another meal and I'll make sure to skin them.
We were both stuffed after that great meal & just hung around camp being lazy. While milling about, Vickie noticed something sticking out of the ground that caught her eye. She dug around it and pulled up an interesting artifact. She had found an old scout knife that had been there for quite some time. It was all rusted up but, for her, was a cool momento of our trip.
Our resident ravens were unrelenting! Actually, they weren't ALL that bad. But they were so persistant I decided to have some fun with it. I told Vickie that ravens are an awfully lot like humans. It's the female bird that's doing ALL the squawking.
We decided to go out and paddle around Cherry this fine, early evening. We tried to fish a little too, but they weren't cooperating. Vickie was finally able to get a decent picture of a loon instead of just ripples on the water. LOL I told her they finally accepted you into their wilderness home. I can't say enough about the atmosphere that Cherry lake provides. I'm partial to smaller intimate lakes off the beaten path. Cherry is not normally a lake you'd just pass through on your way to somewhere else. It IS the destination!!! This lake qualified as that. Plus being 2 seperate bays split by the narrows made it seem smaller yet? While the cliffs surrounding Cherry were not the highest I'd seen, being on such a small body of water made them seem all the more impressive. Also for such a small lake to have islands. And not just any islands? I've seen many, many islands on different lakes, but these were unique. It seemed like they shot up some 40-50 feet straight out of the lake. Especially the one furthest to the east. I don't think there were many spots around it's perimeter where we could've even pulled off to stand on shore?" We checked out the "other" site. It goes without saying that everyone would want to stay at the narrows site. But this was a very respectable site as well. A good insurance site,(because the site on Topaz is poor) in the unlikely event the narrows site is taken. We both spent this evening paddling about, absorbing & appreciating the magnificent spectacle of visionary enchantment that is: Cherry lake.
The wind began to blow a bit and some clouds were now moving in. We headed back to the shelter of camp in case things suddenly got worse. Spending the remainder of our evening just relaxing enjoying our cocktails of choice and the ambiance of a nice campfire. Crawling into the tent for the evening, I heard the first few drops, of what would be an overnight shower, come down. Cherry Lake, Lunar Lake, Clouds, Lake of the, Rivalry Lake