I was awoken by the sun shining into the tent this morning. Greg was still sleeping on his Big Agnus sleeping pad, and I wasn’t about to wake him up. I had to get up and enjoy this morning first thing. Not a sound on the lake, the occasional small lonely duck could be heard flapping his wings, flying from one side of the bay to the other. This also marks the 5th day we have gone without seeing someone, and 8 days since talking to another person besides ourselves. The last person we talked to was the Assistant Park Superintendent Clair. If you are looking for a remote, solitude destination then this place is for you. This early sunny morning, I found the camp all to myself till Greg climbed out of the tent about 30 min later. It was only 7:30AM and I was feeling great! We were ready to move on today and pack up camp, but we were in no rush. The plan was to get back to Telescope Lake today and stay at another campsite on the island; we noticed this campsite on the point while paddling out of Telescope a few days ago. We had to take in consideration; if the weather was bad then it could set us back on exiting the park. We packed up camp on Glen Lake and were on the water at 10:30AM.

Still full from the pancake breakfast, I filled my Nalgene bottle in the middle of the bay and drank up. I wanted to stay hydrated for the journey ahead. We had two 275 meter portages out of Glen Lake and into Optic Lake, then 3 portages out of Optic Lake and into Telescope Lake. We of course had to stop at the waterfalls to fish for a few min. At one waterfall I caught 3 walleye and a snake of a northern pike. Greg caught a few nice size pike as well; we released the fish and continued on to Telescope Lake. Today was sunny and less windy than Day 3 on Telescope Lake. With the wind at our backs we paddled out of the bay and into the first big body of water. Paddled up to the campsite we wanted to stay at and it was occupied, so we traveled around to the opposite side of the island where we stayed on Day 3. Along the way Greg points out something in the water just ahead of us. With one glance I saw it was a beaver. He waded in the water till we got up close to him, then said some bad words to us in his native beaver tongue and took off. It was quite hilarious the way it happened, he sure made it apparent that we were in his territory. Greg and I got to have a laugh and rested a bit. We waited to see if he would surface again but he didn’t come back up. Approaching the campsite, I was starting to feel a little hungry so we got out to stretch our legs and finished off the beef jerky. Seriously thinking about setting up camp for the evening, it was 3:30 in the afternoon and we were tired or I was tired from the journey anyway. Greg said he felt pretty good still and we talked about our options; see we could be at the far east campsite on Telescope in about one hour. Then 7 portages would be on the list for tomorrow’s journey. The weather was on our side right now and we didn’t want to get stranded in case of bad weather. We paddled the remainder of Telescope Lake and I was sure glad we made that decision. The campsite was just to the left of the river and on a point so there was a lot of wind later that evening, which makes a difference for keeping the bugs off you. While setting up camp, Greg saw a snake go down by the shore and under a rock. I jumped into action and quickly scanned the area and spotted the Gardner snake. There was molted snake skin all around the campsite so we named this place, Snake Island.

We had spaghetti for the night’s dinner, and used up a pound of dehydrated hamburger and dehydrated spaghetti sauce. Greg even had a can of parmesan cheese along for toppings! We sat on some rocks and had a great meal on our last night in the park. Everything on this trip has worked out for us and I believe it was because we talked out what we wanted to do, came to a decision we both agreed on. There were cautious decisions during this trip but it turned out to be the best trip for Greg and me. I was looking forward to getting on the move tomorrow but still enjoying the evening and being outdoors. Had an awesome sunset and then off to the tent, slept like a rock this night.

Day Seven Done