Day six - Wednesday - July 6 - Woke up to perfectly smooth water and steam lifting off the water, amazing what nature can show you when you are in the right location. This was a great sign, we had decided that we were doing a day trip loop to Winchell lake on Wed. or Thur. so with the calm we new this was the day! We ended up having Coffee and the left over donuts and pop tarts for breakfast - we didn't want to waste any time getting on the water. We packed up supplies for lunch and what we would need for the trip, loaded the canoes and headed off to the Gaskin to Henson portage down past the first campsite. This portage is uphill from both sides to the ridge in the middle, it's 80 rods, had some standing water and muddy areas that made it slippery and the Henson side has a tricky take out/put in, otherwise it's not that bad. Being on Hensen before the steam had totally lifted had us hoping to see some moose or other wildlife, but we didn't. Henson is about 2&1/2 miles long, but it is really narrow, so it was a nice lake to glide through early in the morning, very peaceful. We didn't see any occupied camp sites on Henson, as crowded as Gaskin was, here, one lake away, was a lot less populated. The Henson to Omega portage was next, about 20 rods, short and sweet. Not too bad - a little muddy from the rains the day before, but not too bad. nice paddle on calm water brought us to the Omega to Winchell portage which is about 50 rods. On the Omega side it was a lot of boulders and rocks - this one will get your feet wet for sure. The trail was rocky in areas and had it's fair share of mud, but it wasn't to difficult and the Winchell put in was not to bad. We paddled into the calm waters of Winchell, we had expected some bigger water as the wind had picked up, it wasn't blowing bad but it was fairly steady. This is were we saw the gathering of 7 Loons. Rarely did we see more than two Loons together at any one time, to see that many together was amazing, we took a lot of pictures. After we had put the cameras up we had a Loon within 20 feet of the canoe take off and fly - amazing how they get up out of the water and literally run across the surface until they get enough lift to launch into the air, it was spectacular to watch and listen to it's feet pounding the water. By now it was getting to be about 10:30 - 11:00 and we were getting hungry so we started looking for a campsite to stop, eat lunch, hydrate and relax before we made our way back to Gaskin. We were starting to see clouds roll in and there had been a pretty constant breeze for the last hour or so - we weren't to concerned since the wind was out off the West and we were going East - we'd have the wind at our backs for the 4 plus miles of Winchell we had left. The first site we came to, on a point right before you hit the big water on Winchell was taken so we went West to the next site which was free. This site was amazing, large areas to fish and swim, nice fire pit area and plenty of tent pads, this would be a nice site for a large group. We ate our PB&J lunch here, drank some water, did a little exploring and took pictures before we headed out to investigate the Cliffs. We tried to find the trail up to the top of the Cliffs, but after an hour of bushwhacking we finally decided it wasn't the safest thing to do - we'll find someone that has been there and find out how they did it before we try again. Again we loaded up and started our paddling exploration of Winchell. It was interesting to just sit in the canoe and look at the scenery, listen to the sounds of nature and enjoy having this experience. As we were heading East we checked out several sites and one had a stone corral on a rock shelf as a live well for fish, Justin really liked that. We mostly floated and enjoyed the relaxed paddle to the portage that would take us back to Gaskin. We found the portage easily, it was 52 Rods with good take out on the Winchell side, the Gaskin side was muddy enough to pull your shoes off, I went in up to my calf and Justin did lose his shoe - Cameron acted quickly and managed to get his hand in the hole before it closed up, luckily he got the shoe back - definitely a put in we won't forget. Nice paddle back to the campsite on Gaskin and a relaxing afternoon of swimming, washing up a little fishing and picture taking. We decided that we still had a bunch of bacon, cheese and bread left so a menu change was in order - Knorrs noodles with foil chicken weighed a lot less than three pounds of bacon, we were not carrying heavy food out! We made a "Boundary Waters Good" meal of hash browns, eggs, peppered gravy and cheese thoroughly mixed up and slathered on bread with bacon on the side, yeeehhaaaawww, I could feel my arteries clogging as I ate! After a fine dinner, we had no bake cheesecake for desert. Cleaned up camp and messed around for the rest of the evening. I think this was the day Mike explained to Justin what the difference between a fairy tell and a lie was - inside joke.