Dawn broke over Japer Lake on our final day in Quetico. Glory be: it was a completely clear sky, and an absolutely mirror-calm lake! The girls, who apparently are much lighter sleepers than their old dads, compared notes about all the scurrying/scampering noises they’d heard around the tents last night. Apparently our mouse-like visitor from the previous evening was the advance scout for an entire army of accomplices, as evidenced by tiny footprints everywhere around camp and by the lack of even the tiniest crumb anywhere from our previous night’s dinner.

There would be no sleeping late today as we had an appointment to be picked up by our towboat on Hook Island at 3pm, and, being novices, we weren’t absolutely sure how long it would take us to travel there. Our rudimentary map-reading skills indicated that we were facing approximately nine miles of travel and three portages, but accurately converting those statistics into hours was beyond us so we opted to play safe and leave early. After our customary hot breakfast (I think this one was sausage gravy over fresh baked biscuits, we ate well on this trip) we broke camp and headed south towards the portage to Ottertrack Lake. Soon after leaving the camp we passed by this tree:

Perhaps the recipient of a lightning strike? It was peeled like someone had started to open a banana. This was by far the calmest and warmest day of our trip, and even after the sun rose the winds stayed down.

It was tough to do given the beautiful day, but with our 3pm deadline looming we resisted the urge to fish and instead concentrated on making time on our journey towards the pickup point. On this day we made the best traveling time of our entire trip, probably due at least in part to the perfectly calm conditions. A flat, somewhat muddy portage took us to Ottertrack Lake, and a mile or two later we turned to the northeast along the border. It’s probably not surprising that the border was busy on a beautiful Saturday midsummer, and on this portion of our journey we shared the water with numerous groups, most of which were traveling the same direction as we. We reached Monument portage just ahead of a group of several canoes of what appeared to be scouts on a day trip, so we hustled to unload our canoes and clear the landing. The scout group leader was a buff young guy who caught up to us just as we reached the other side of the portage on the first leg of our double dip, and just as we started to double back for round two there was a bunch of shouting from the lagging members of his group. Cries of “Two Canoes Down, Two Canoes Down!” echoed along the trail and the young group leader got a panic-stricken look, dropped his canoe and sprinted back down the trail towards the commotion. By the time we made it back to the scene of the catastrophe at our slower, old guy pace things had calmed down. Apparently while negotiating the first portion of the portage, a fairly steep climb, a guy carrying a canoe had fallen backwards down the incline and had wiped out another member of the party who was following close behind with another canoe overhead. The group leader had everybody calmed down and they were talking about who was going to carry what when we squeezed past the scattered gear on the trail. When we came back on our last leg the accident scene was cleared, and we caught up to their gang at the launch at the Swamp Lake end of the portage. No broken bones or other serious injury, but there were bruises to bodies and to young egos. Swamp Lake? Early cartographers must have run out of the more romantic lake names when they got to this one, which was actually a nice-looking little lake on which we scattered many smallies with the canoe as we crossed. Maybe it doesn’t get fished much because most visitors are in a hurry to travel through? We negotiated the tiniest portage of our trip between Swamp Lake and Saganaga, so short that we didn’t completely empty the canoes and performed kind of a hybrid portage/carry-over. While wading the canoes away from the shallow landing on the Saganaga side Elissa spotted this guy and pounced:

One of my favorite photos of the trip! After granting the miniscule amphibian his freedom we cruised a mile or two to the narrow opening into the big-water portion of the lake, arriving around noon. Now that we could actually see our pickup point across some three miles of calm water we figured that we were in good shape for time, and we enjoyed the luxury of going ashore for lunch on the rocks. While eating we watched a number of groups cruising past and a few folks fishing without apparent success. With more than two hours in which to cover three miles we figured that we could squeeze in a bit more fishing of our own so we unracked our trolling gear and trolled deep stuff up the center of the lake in search of lake trout. For over an hour we trolled without a bite in spite of passing countless fish marks on the depth sounder.

Maybe schools of bait? I hadn’t learned enough about the new depthfinder to figure out how to turn off those silly cartoon fish characters and enable the actual returns to plot, so I couldn’t tell. In any event our trolling was so boring that Elissa kicked off her shoes, leaned back and started to nod off to sleep. I was methodically dipping and pulling to keep our craft headed towards Hook Island when a shriek from Elissa split the air: Half asleep she’d absent-mindedly been rubbing her foot when she felt an unfamiliar lump on her heel, and awoke to discover a plump leech firmly affixed! “Ewwww”, “gross”, “what do I do?” and more stream-of-unhappy-conciousness interjections filled the air until I could get a word in and told her to pluck it off, which she accomplished with her fishing pliers. (The record should show that we never stopped trolling during the ordeal). The little frog that Elissa had recently been torturing would have laughed at her discomfiture over the leech. We kept on trolling and finally, as we were within a half mile of Hook Island we passed over an underwater ledge and both canoes hooked fish at almost the same time, small lakers of approximately 18 inches which ended up being our final fish of the trip.

We landed those fish, made a couple of unsuccessful repeat passes through the same area, and then made for the pickup point, arriving 30 minutes early at just about the same time as our tow boat. We loaded the gear on the towboat, had the operator snap this photo, then we were underway headed for home!

Ashore at Seagull Outfitters we turned in the gear for inventory and discovered that we’d managed to keep it all intact except for one lost spoon. We then adjourned to the bunkhouse for a change of clothes, a post-trip hot shower, and a start on our packing. Half-packed, we took a break for dinner which was accomplished via a ten mile drive down the Gunflint Trail to the Gunflint Lodge. During dinner we undertook an informal post-trip debriefing which began with the all-important awarding of the fishing tournament honors, and while I was happy to apply the side bet money to the dinner tab, it was the championship t-shirts which were most coveted by Elissa and myself.

Our northwoods adventure was not yet complete, for during the dusk drive back to our bunkhouse at Seagull a bear ambled across the road approximately 75 yards ahead of the rental car, providing the first-ever glimpse of one of these animals for both Elissa and Stacey. In fact, as the car coasted to a stop at the point where the bruin had disappeared into the bushes and before either Byron or I could object, both rear doors swung open in unison and the two girls jumped out and ran to the roadside in hopes of a glimpse of a retreating bear’s butt. At that age (both girls are in their early 20’s) they think they’re bulletproof (and bear-proof)! We recovered the girls, made it back to the bunkhouse without further adventure, finished packing and went to sleep.