This was the morning that I slept in. It was 6:45 when I rolled over and realized that it was time to get up. Someone was stirring outside already, as it turned out, it was Bill and Piwi. The sun was rising behind a bright fog on the lake and there was just a bit of mist, too.

Neil took these two photos of the sunrise:

I decided to try a package of Ova powdered eggs that I had ordered online after reading a favorable review of them (somewhere.) We were impressed overall. I hydrated them as directed, heated up some chopped pre-cooked bacon in the pan, and then cooked them like scrambled eggs. We would use these again. Also hydrated some freeze-dried peach slices and added those to our instant organic oatmeal with Nido added. It was a good, hearty breakfast.

The sun was warming up the campsite as we broke camp, leaving about 10 A. M.

I took one last shot with the pocket camera to remember my sitting rock campsite. I was a bit weepy as we paddled past the big rocks and out of Cherokee Lake.

We enjoyed a pleasant paddle on Cherokee Creek, pulled the canoes over a beaver dam, and arrived at the 180-rod portage.

It's just a little beaver dam.

Piwi always needs to find another new stick.

I had been dreading this one. My pain level, particularly in the knees, had been increasing since the trip to Frost, and I knew that just walking this portage would be a task for me, especially since it would be followed by more portages later on. I paced myself, and actually dilly-dallied along, stopping to look at flowers, fungi, rocks, trees, etc. and to listen to the birds on the way. It took me 45 minutes to walk the trail!

I hate to say it, but I think the guys were slowing down a bit, too. I waited for them, of course, as Neil made his second carry, and Bill and David made the second and third. I photographed some bright red maple leaves I had seen near the end of the portage, and also tried to photograph a red dragonfly that seemed to like posing on the bottom of Bill and David’s canoe.

Then after the last carry there was an emergency—we had lost Piwi!

Bill and David retraced the portage, calling for her, and whistling. She had always stayed right on the trail before, and never had strayed far out of sight, so this was a mystery. I am sure when Bill (Ho Ho) writes his trip report he will explain this situation much better, since I was just waiting while they were off looking for her, but eventually they found her with some “rescuers” at the end of the trail. It seems she had jumped into the water and was swimming back along Cherokee Creek! Somehow she got confused about where the end of the trail was, and where we were.

Once we were all united again, we paddled on Skoop Lake to the same spot where we had lunched before, and we decided that we should lunch again. As luck would have it, our spot was occupied. We scouted along the lakeshore looking for another lunch location and didn’t find anything very agreeable, so we ended up going back to the Skoop Lake portage location and having a quick lunch there with some other folks. It was two gentlemen in solo canoes. They appeared interested in Piwi, and didn’t mind that she checked them out, as well as giving their lunch a good sniff. One of them had a black magic Bell canoe that was a pretty thing, too.

Piwi didn't seem any the worse for wear from her recent adventure, and she enjoyed her lunch as always.

We made the decision to take Ada Creek on our return instead of the portage, so this would be a new experience. We knew that there was a beaver dam of some significant height, but we also knew that others had handled this obstacle, so we figured we could manage it if they did. The creek is narrow and shallow, and that in itself presented a few challenges. For Neil and me, sometimes it would be grounding out in the shallows (we were more heavily loaded in our 17-foot Bell Northwind. Bill and David paddled a Wenonah Champlain and didn’t draw as much water with the bigger boat, but of course the extra length and width made the narrow, winding passages harder to maneuver.

The dam lived up to its hype! It is at least four+ feet tall, and looks a bit daunting from the top. With my balance and mobility issues, I was the first one out on the top, and scrambled down to the bottom on one side to wait while the guys slid our canoe down into the stream at the bottom—so far, so good! Neil made it down to the bottom, managed to get into the canoe, turn it around, and get me loaded up again.

Then Bill and David had to move their canoe down the dam, which didn’t present too much difficulty. More problematical was convincing Piwi to leave her beaver sticks and get back into the canoe! She was having fun on the rocks in the sun, with new toys to play with, and it took some coaxing to persuade her that jumping down the big beaver dam into the canoe was the best course of action.

Along the creek there was another, smaller, beaver dam to pull over. Bill and David pulled our canoe, fully loaded, over this one and we heard an ominous creak/snap sound as it topped the rise—Neil said he saw the bottom of the canoe bow up in the middle. We were concerned that some damage might have been done, but as far as we can see, our Northwind survived OK. (It would have been wiser to get out of the canoe before lifting it over the dam, obviously.)

Finally we were on our way to paddle the rest of Ada Creek, and portage into Sawbill Lake once again. On our way we surprised this turtle. I thought I could get closer, but all I got to reward my efforts was a splash!

The wind had been picking up all afternoon, so we expected to encounter a south/southwest wind on Sawbill, and we were correct. It was very windy! I suggested at the end of the portage that, given the late time of day (about 3:30), and the windy conditions, we should take the first available campsite. Bill said that he could see that the first site by the portage was open, but it wasn’t a good site, and he felt we should go on to try to get one that Neil and I had used years ago and had recommended. He is a Quetico camper; he isn’t accustomed to paddling by lots of occupied campsites at 4 in the afternoon. I had great misgivings about passing up that vacant campsite.

So we took off on the windy lake. We were tired from a long day, and as we passed several occupied campsites I became more and more convinced that we would just be paddling the entire length of Sawbill Lake and camping at the campground for our last night together. NOT what we had envisioned! We separated so that Bill and David, who were stronger paddlers, could check out more campsites, but they kept coming back with negative results. After a quick reconnoiter in the middle of the lake, Neil said that we would go along the western shoreline while they checked out the site back in the bay (thus getting us into a more sheltered area and also getting us over where we could paddle around to the two sites on the bay that leads to the Kelso portage if that was our next best bet.) Bill and David continued on the eastern shoreline, and after they came out of the bay signaling to us that the site was open, we crossed the lake to meet them.

The waves weren’t terrible. I don’t want to make it sound like it was a hair-raising experience, because I have been in worse. But it was about at the height of my comfort level, especially when I am tired at the end of the day. We made it across the lake in the wind in very good time, paddled into a lovely little sheltered bay, and found a really nice campsite that fit our needs well. No beautiful lake view, but sheltered and quiet. Plenty of room for two tents. We stopped at 4:40, and were thankful that we weren’t still paddling towards the campground.

As is their custom,Bill and David took a quick “dip” in the lake and changed clothes (this was the first time, though, that they skinny-dipped—no photos of that, to be sure!) and we set up camp quickly, as the remaining light would be brief, especially in a site that was heavily wooded.

Neil and I shared Mountain House Lasagna for our supper, with hot chocolate as a pick-me-up while the meal preparations were being made. Later on, after Bill cooked his meal of rice, black beans and cheese, I again borrowed his stove and cooked up a little pan of BackPacker’s Pantry Apple Delite for dessert. Neil needs a lot of carbs when he exercises, and the freeze-dried entrees don’t provide enough unless I supplement with extra macaroni, rice or noodles. Somehow I had forgotten the noodles on this trip.

Bill and David shared another lovely chocolate bar, and we sipped our bourbon as we enjoyed the sunset.

This was the first time Neil and I had ever heard wolves howling in the BWCA, and the sound of them was quite the accompaniment for our Kentucky Bourbon and chocolate, sociable conversation, and relaxation after a long day. We were thankful that Piwi was sleeping in the tent and not bothered by the wolf songs.

Shortly after 9 P. M. we headed for our tent. As I was making my night preparations by headlamp, I heard a rustling in the leaves and grass, and realized that some sort of small animal was nearby. Soon I noticed a leopard frog hopping around in the vicinity of the tent. He seemed rather stunned by the light and posed nicely for a photo.

It was harder to get to sleep on this night. I didn’t want to put in my earplugs (those help to drown out my husband’s gentle snoring) because I did want to hear the wolves. And there was just the feeling of the last night of our trip. As much as sleeping in a bed and cleaning up with some nice hot water seemed like a good thing, leaving the BWCA yet again didn’t seem good at all. It was warmer in the tent than the previous several evenings. I lay in the dark, thinking about all of our sweet face-licks from Piwi, about all of the good-natured help we had received from Bill and David, about the beach on Frost, and the smiley rock and the Gordon Lake loon, and the sitting rock, and. . . .and. . . .and