Tuesday, August 10, 2010.....OOPS, I kind of rewrote the above on this day.. I'll leave it as is. Left Jim's cabin @ 7:20 am en route to Lake Vermillion to pick up his canoe at his bro-in-law's. Nice cabin on the south shore of the lake. Then a quick stop at Zup's in Ely for some sandwich stuff. I had been in there before but never used the bathroom. I was surprised to find I had to go down to the basement storage areas around some corners and walla - the bathroom. A quick stop at the ranger station and then for some gear rentals and leeches at LaTourells on Moose Lake and we were finally on our way to the EP. Good thing it wasn't too far to the EP on Snowbank as we realized we had one to many sleeping pads. So, back to LaTourells to return a pad and again, we were finally off to the EP. Five hours after leaving the cabin we arrived at Snowbank, about 12:30. It was a beautiful day and the sun was shining. Couldn't have asked for a better day. It was 86 degrees and the big lake was calm - flat as glass. In fact, with the exception of a couple small rains, the whole week was beautiful. No rush on this day as we weren't headed in to far. Pack the boats and were off at 1:30. Took the 80 rod portage into Parent Lake. Parent was quiet. Not a soul until we arrived at the portage to Disapointment. We met a couple guys who just got on the water from the portage. They asked us to let the rest of their party know they would be at the other end of the lake. The group was from NW Iowa. We did our double portage and then met the rest of the Iowa group. They were pissed. They had pushed hard all day doing 14 portages. The group was about 8 people and the remaining 6 were not happy about the first two pushing ahead and leaving them a lake behind all day. I wasn't too happy about it either as they had two kids about 12 years old. They were looking half past dead. One of those kids carried a #4 pack loaded though. I guess he wanted to get back to the corn fields! On Disapointment we paddled around and found many open sites all the way to the north end of the lake. We opted for one on the south end on a west pointing penninsula looking at an island. Very nice and open site. We made camp, bathed in the lake and had some dinner. We saw an otter swim for a moment and then he was gone. Mike and Adam (Gary's son's) went out fishing and caught a few northerns. It was a hot day. Bugs were minimal the whole week. The first night was beautiful with millions of stars.