Thursday, July 11, 2013

After talking to the girls and them agreeing that our site on Jeff did not cut it for layover, we packed up and made our way to what we planned would be a great lay over site. A couple of the girls were really enjoying learning how to read the maps so they navigated us to the 8 rod portage, which was not too difficult to find. It was a nice short, easy portage. We loaded up and continued our short paddle to the much anticipated portage that would lead us to some river paddling. The beginning of the portage trail wasn't too hard to find, but was obviously not a well-traveled trail.

Arriving at the other end of the portage and seeing the river entrance, my excitement exploded! I love these kind of challenges! We can see the water....but getting to it will require some teamwork and a sense of adventure. Fortunately, we have a crew who is excited for the adventure!

We continued to work together to make our way down this narrow, very winding river. We only had one other place where we had to do a lift over due to a beaver dam in progress. Once we reached West Lake we had a nice paddle to the 12 rod portage to South Lake. We stopped at this campsite to enjoy lunch and wash some mud off our boots. The portage was very flat and easily traveled. The short paddle across South Lake brought us to another easy 14 rod portage and into North Bay.

We were happy to see the water not too bad so we set our goal for the large island at the south end for our campsite. The site on the north-east side was available and the girls loved the rock shoreline so it became home for the next two nights.

This site did not have good bear hang trees again as most of the pines were very unstable. We were finally able to get one tree that we made work for the two nights. It's a good thing we had eaten a lot of food by this point of our trip!