Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Eugene to Ge-be-on-e-quet. Approximately 10 miles.

Wake up and make ready to travel. Another beautiful morning. Today will be a long day, but the goal is Ge-be.

We travel from Eugene to Beartrack and prepare for the longest portage of our trip, 280 rod. A little pep talk, and we're off for Thumb. The boys are doing GREAT today! Noah and Joel both carried their own packs the whole way. I'm glad to see them helping each other and getting along.

We are able to float the 9 rod portage Thumb to Finger by paddling over this dam. Which is good because Joel is tuckered out... He fell asleep as we paddled across Thumb after hiking the 280 rodder.

After unloading our gear, and a sleeping Joel, we make ready to portage Finger to Finger Creek. In all of the portages I have ever carried across, this is the most beautiful so far. I wish my camera batteries wouldn't have died during this portage, but I guess you'll have to go see it for yourself. Water fall, Old growth pines, down hill to the creek, absolutely gorgeous!! I doubled back to carry Joel for a while until he woke up about half way across. Then I gave him a piggy back ride the rest of the way. This is the only portage the whole trip, he didn't walk himself. I figure he deserved a break.

Noah on the other hand, was ready to go. Being his second trip to the BW, he acts like a seasoned pro, you know, 5 years old going on 20... I thought this was a cool shot of him hanging out on the rocks before the portage. Today is the day that everything seems to come together. All is right in the world.

We paddle from Finger Creek into Pocket. I would like to come back to Pocket and spend a few days. The island campsite looked great and we didn't see any other groups today. We consider staying at Pocket, but decide with the perfect weather we should push on, anticipating sooner or later we may encounter rain. Travel seems easy today, but we are covering a pretty good distance. We pull over a beaver dam on Ge-be Creek, and portage into Ge-be to find a view to die for. Ge-be is beautiful. Just like everyone says. It was afternoon and the wind was picking up. With the kids on board, we wanted to find a site and get out of the wind. Our goal was the site with the lawn furniture, but as it turns out, it was taken. We settle for the southern most site on Ge-be which I would rate as 4.5 star. It has the largest pine tree I have ever seen on the way to the latrine. Two nice tent spots, and a great view. It sits up off the water, and minimal bugs. We make camp, and eat dinner. We decide to try our luck fishing. Our luck was good, and we catch and release a few small mouth bass around the small island to the east of the campsite.

After fishing, we head back to the campsite, and make ready for sleep. As we are sitting around the fire, a family of 4 paddled by with 2 adults, and two young children. The gentleman of the group said they were hoping for our site. We offered to share our campsite, as it was very late in the day and we explained that the other sites we had seen on Ge-be were taken except for the north eastern most site. He decided that they would paddle on, and if no other sites were open, may come back and share our site. We didn't see them again. Hope they found a site safely, and had an enjoyable time for the remainder of their trip. It was neat to see others sharing the BW with their children!!

We eventually head off to bed. The boys are asleep within 10 minutes, I may have lasted 15. What an AWESOME day!!!