Sunday, June 24, 2012 3:45 comes early, Kim is up and showering while I carry everything down to the truck and get it loaded, at 4:15 we go next door to the 24 hr gas station for breakfast and we are on our way! By a little after 6:00 we are on the water paddling. It is foggy and cool! Our hope to possibly see wildlife is unmet the whole trip. A total of 5 portages and about 16 miles of paddling is on the agenda for today. Wind is out of the north which means it will be a cross wind and in our face for the last two-thirds of our journey. We reach Devil's Cascade and complete it by 9:30, me double portaging and Kim single for the most part. Now just 10 miles of paddling and Beatty Portage is between us and Snow Bay.
We stop at Beatty and have a granola bar, it is 11:30 and I am getting tired and I know Kim is! The paddling is wearing on her and she feels it! Five more miles or a little less into a 7 mph headwind... we make it the island we want to camp on which is unoccupied at a little before 1:30 pm. Total travel time was 7 hours, we averaged almost 3 mph paddling and 1.4 mph portaging, overall average was about 2.2 mph. Not too bad, I say for the conditions! I was very proud of my wife Kim, who hung in and made it!
Once at camp the first thing I told her to do was to hang her hammock where she could rest after we got the tent up and ate a bite of summer sausage, cheese and ritz craclers! The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing, me going out solo in our AR 18.5 to get water, and then having those ribeyes grilled to perfection. We went to bed early as the mosquitoes were making their presence known!!

Funny story for the day... as we were paddling toward Beatty Portage there is a bay on the US side that has some large rocks sticking out of the water. On each rock was is a sea gull that claims it as their territory. As we were paddling toward one, battling a side wind from the north as we were paddling west, the gull on it turns toward us and takes flight coming toward us. When he gets about 30 feet over us directly over my wife in the front of the canoe... he stops mid-air and drops a load of poop! The only way it missed her was because the wind was blowing 7-8 mph from the side, and with his height it missed her by about 15 feet to her left side. The gull was telling us to stay away from his rock! I had never seen anything like it!

Path: Little Indian Souix, to Upper Pauness, to Lower Pauness, to Little Indian Souix, to Loon Lake, to Lac la Croix. Distance 15.8 miles, time 7 hours.