Thursday, October 18, 2012

Today's weather 44 for a low, 53 for a high. Rain/sprinkles until mid afternoon, then overcast. More evening sprinkles.

Our day started with an early alarm. If it were not for the excitement of our journey ahead, I'm sure there would have been more grumbling. It was dark and now raining. The camper cabin has a nice porch for working dry and packing gear. We spent a fair amount of time taking instruction and packing our gear into duluth packs and a few random extra packs. My day started with a trip to the car. Just outside of the range of the porch light was a GIANT puddle. That was a fine way to start my day. I guess I'll start my wet portage boot program early today. We had arranged for a shuttle up Moose Lake to the first portage. We met our guide and loaded, now in a heavy rain. I think everyone is too excited to complain about the rain though. The first timers and the veterans are equally loving the north woods smells and sights. The little portage to Splash was just too easy. I guess that's a good way to break in the greenhorns. Splash lake was calm. Up the channel to the next portage. I was bold, being in a heavy aluminum canoe, I decided to try to paddle up the rapids to avoid portaging. It was an easy feat. The kevlar canoes followed suit. Paddling against the wind in a driving rain made it easy to think that we should be almost to our proposed campsite. In reality, we were only half way. We stuck together and stuck to the plan. The site suggested to us was great, for summer time. We needed some windbreak, and space for a 12x12 tent. We found and settled on 1226, the site just to the NE of the portage to Boot. By mid afternoon the rain had let up and we had camp set up.

We prepped wood and did some fishing. The camp stove was great in the tent to help dry things out. Steak was on the menu for supper. What a great way to end the day. As we tucked in for the night, the rains came again.