Day 3: 5.5 Miles 125 rods Lakes paddled: Toe, South Arm Knife, Hanson, Ester, Hanson Woke up and got going at around 8-8:30. Neck was sore this morning and I took my daily routine of Tylenol and Claritan. Quick cold breakfast of summer sausage and cheese sandwiches then out fishing. Tried to catch some smallies on Knife but no luck. Couldn’t find what looked like good holes for the bass, decided that next trip we need to do more research on fishing spots. Probably would have had better luck from shore at our camp. After trying several spots on Knife we headed back to camp on Toe to pack up and grab lunch. While loading up the canoe I spotted our hatchet still propped up next to a tree. I ran over and grabbed it and lashed it to the outside of the Duluth pack, Royce wanted me to put it in the pack but I figured it would be fine. I went down to the canoe and turned around for Royce to take the pack from my back and lay it in the canoe but instead he went to work unlashing the hatchet to put it inside the pack. While doing so we were both oblivious to the fact that our canoe was slowly drifting away. Of course this was my fault (according to the guilty party) so I got to get wet chasing it down. On knife we stoped and checked out the eastern-most campsite on the south arm, another nice site, this one had a sandy landing even. I think the portage from Knife to Hanson was the longest of our trip at 120 rods. We managed without a problem. We’re double portaging this trip, my brother is the most graceful with the canoe so first trip he takes that and I take the food pack since it is of course the heaviest, on the second trip typically I’ve been taking the gear pack and Royce the lightweight day pack. Sometimes we switch it up, I find out at the end that the evil little trip leader was grabbing the heavier pack on the longer portages so he could say that he carried the most weight. When we got to Hanson we knew that we wanted to stay at one of the two campsites on the east side of the lake closest to the portage to link lake which we would head to for fishing the next day. Since this would be our one and only multiple night campsite too we wanted to make sure it was good. The first site was open. It was a nice site with 1 good tent pad and multiple places to reach the water, bear hang wasn’t going to be ideal but it would do. It was early so we decided to check out the next one. Occupied. Rather than go back we decide to check out Ester. This was dumb, once we got up there we realized we would be much happier closer to where we wanted to fish so we back tracked to the first site on Hanson. You’d think that after day 1 we would be smart enough to not be so picky but this time our site was still open and we made camp. Had some easy mac which didn’t turn out as good as I thought it would. Would be better off with regular mac and cheese and powdered milk. Should have tested out our menu items before the trip. Of course we’re eating so much gorp and jerky during the day that mealtime isn’t a big deal to us. I was feeling like relaxing so I laid in my hammock while Royce fished alone. He lost a northern and landed 1 small smallie. I’m glad that we planned a whole day dedicated to fishing since we’ve been so dead-set on getting where we’re going every day that I haven’t wetted my line much. Part of the problem I know is just because we’re still slow when it comes to setting up camp, cooking, cleaning up etc.