The rain lingered into the morning. Since we weren't in any hurry, the mosquitoes were out in force, and the young guys seemed to be big sleepers, I stayed in the tent a lot longer than I usually do, finally getting up around 8:00. David got up too and helped me get the food pack down so we could have coffee. Enjoying a cup of joe -

The expanse of Cummings stretching westward -

The shoreline to the south of our point -

Rock and pine -

The two of us hung out with the bugs for a couple hours and then decided it was time for breakfast and rousted the guys out of their tent around 10:00. I asked them how they slept, and the answer was not so well. It seems that a mess of skeeters got in their tent at the start of the night and they failed to kill them off before lights out. Then another squadron invaded when they got up to put the fly on. We counseled taking strict search and destroy counterinsurgency measures after getting in the tent in the future.

Michael and Josiah also said that they thought they heard wolves soon after going to bed last night. I was wondering if they had heard some particularly crazy loons, but I had described to them what wolves sounded like, and they thought they were a match. David said he heard them too. Well, my hearing is not what it once was!

I made bacon and pancakes for a breakfast, which was a hit with the guys -

We lazed and dawdled for a while after breakfast. When I was filtering some water in the late morning, a 3-person canoe came by heading west. We could see later that they set up camp a couple miles away at the western end of the lake. Otherwise we didn't see anyone else today.

Eventually we got into gear for a day trip. We decided to paddle to the western end of Cummings, lift over into Otter, and then explore the beginning of the Little Indian Sioux River. From the map, it looked like the LIS has a bunch of portages connecting little pools in that first section, so we probably wouldn't get very far down the river, but it seemed worth exploring.

Josiah wanted to try out being in the stern, and I suggested to Mike he might want to try too. He was dubious but gave it a go. I reviewed the steering and j-stroke instruction I'd given back at the cabin, and we were off -

Mike had some trouble getting the hang of steering. It was hard from the bow to tell exactly what the problem was. I'm not sure he was doing the j-stroke right, but I think the bigger issue was that he had trouble anticipating when he had corrected enough, so the canoe would swing first to the right, then be overcorrected too far to the left, then be overcorrected too far to the right, and so on. It probably didn't help that we were in a big unloaded canoe with a fair amount of rocker. Fortunately, there was little wind, because with our disparity in weight it was hard to get the canoe trimmed right (we did have our food pack as far forward as possible). So we ended up zigzagging down Cummings. Which was just fine, because the journey is the destination. Another shot of the two of us -

Mike was still smiling -

For his part, Josiah picked up the j-stroke and the overall steering concept pretty fast -

Does this picture look posed? -

Eventually we came to the little rapids and liftover to Otter Lake. Mike and I had probably covered twice as much distance as Josiah and David, but Mike got us there nonetheless. He said we definitely needed to switch places at the portage, though. I think Mike is a confirmed bowman. Which was fine with me, because I like paddling in the stern. And Mike provided a lot of power in the bow.

Looking through to Otter Lake as we approached the liftover. This was the only time David and Josiah beat us anywhere on this trip -

It's a scenic little spot -

Otter inlet -

Waiting to get going -

We made a beeline across Otter, which is a pretty little lake, to the headwaters of the Little Indian Sioux. I wasn't paying too close attention to the map to see where the first portage was, since we were just exploring anyway, but later I looked and it seems like it might start right at the end of the lake. We never checked, and I'm not sure the portages are maintained much or at all along this part of the river (anyone know?). We threaded our way through a shallow, rocky area with a decent current to a small pool that quickly came to a screeching halt at a giant beaver dam. (I think the dam is actually a little further west than I marked it on the map above, at the far end of the first big pool in the river.)

We made our way through various obstacles to the shore and I got out to try to take a closer look at the dam -

Mike looked on skeptically -

Deeper, deeper. . . -

This dam must be at least 150 feet long (maybe much more) and probably 6 or more feet high. It's hard to tell because you really couldn't get a good view of the whole thing or the downstream side. Another view -

Looking back at the flooded meadow -

I came upon a blueberry patch while scouting in vain for a path to the downstream side of the dam, so we stopped to snack -

The sky had been clearing for a while now, and it got hot when the sun came out -

We scouted around a little more to see if there was a way around the dam, but figured that whatever portage there was must start back by Otter. By now we were ready for lunch and decided to turn around and stop at the Otter campsite to eat. The shade when we got to our lunch spot was a blessing-

Filtering water -

After lunch we decided to make a beeline back to our campsite to swim and loaf. It didn't take long to retrace our route (without any zigzagging this time). The rest of the day we just hung out in camp, grateful for the shade and thankful when the breeze picked up to cool us in the open pines and clear some of the daytime mosquitoes away. In a serious breech of protocol, we completely forgot to take any pictures.

For dinner we made Zup's brats with wild rice over the fire, boiled up and buttered some red potatoes, and had some baby carrots. We were eating much better than David and I normally do at dinners. After cleaning up, battening down the camp, and taking yet another swim, we enjoyed some evening beverages on our big west-facing dome of granite before the post-sunset horde of mosquitoes forced into the tents.