Wednesday, July 03, 2013 Woke up at 5:30. Had coffee in bed again! Beautiful mist on the lake as the sun was rising. No wind. Looked like a great day in the making.

Three Whiskey Jacks (Canada Jays) came and paid me a visit. All I had to offer them was a cold, wet, left over Folger’s Single packet. No takers! I had a banana and an apple for breakfast which was convenient since I didn’t have to cook or clean up anything. I’ve become convinced that doing simple meals is the way to when doing solo trips. As other trippers had mentioned in their trip reports, I too, tend to not eat as much when I’m soloing. Not sure why that is.

I have what feels like the beginning of possible rotator cuff pain in my left shoulder. Thank goodness for Ibuprofen! It went away and really didn’t bother me the rest of the trip.

To be honest, for some reason, I’m having some difficulty getting into soling this time. Too many other people present? Not isolated enough? Too old and not in as good of shape as last year? The heat and bugs? Not sure what it is exactly. Maybe a combination of things.

The second pond leading out of Lake Polly is very badly drawn/depicted on my Fisher map. I wasted more time than I wanted just trying to find the dang portage out of there. The map is very deceptive. Fisher really needs to do a re-do on it and add more accurate detail.

I checked out the 3 “best” campsites on Malberg Lake that I knew about. All were occupied. It was getting quite hot, and I was tired, but I decided to go ahead and paddle on to the northwest corner of Malberg where the map showed two possible sites. The first one on the peninsula was a total bust with absolutely no shade and nowhere to even hang a hammock. Rather than back track, I decided to take the risk of paddling on to the ever popular, sandy Five star site further on, ..but, as I had expected, it was already occupied.

I found a shady piece of shore nearby. Ate lunch. Decided to press on to the Kawishiwi River that lay ahead. The good part of the water level being high was that I was able to avoid two small portages yesterday. The bad side of high water level was that there was a 30 yard stretch of 2 ½ feet water in the middle of the 67 rod portage leading out of Malberg Lake! I kept the canoe on my shoulders and simply waded through it, hoping that my shoes (the only pair I brought) would eventually dry out. They did.

I was starting to get hot, sweaty and tired. I was hoping that the marginal site (#1038) on River Lake that I was forced to stay at last year would be open and available to me this time around. I remembered the site not being that great for a tent, ..but to my delight, I found that it was a much better site for hammocking with a cool, shaded grove of cedars right close to the water. It was empty, thank goodness, so I set up my hammock and tarp and rested and cooled off for an hour and a half, which really helped refresh and renew me. There was a whole lot of available wood lying around on this site. I decided to stay up and have a camp fire that night. When I finally did lie down for the night in my hammock, I was warmly greeted by a bunch of fireflies circling around on the inside of the tarp. It was amazing to me how much warm and inviting light each one of those little creatures created. It was a very pleasant backdrop with which to fall asleep.