Thursday, August 21, 2014 Again, as we had every day, we awoke to clouds. An oatmeal breakfast made for a quick getaway and after one more slog through the slop between Omega and Henson, we were headed east hoping to make the eastern part of Gaskin Lake by lunchtime and to settle there for the last night of our trip. The paddle down Henson and the portage to Gaskin went smoothly but by the time we got to Gaskin the breeze had picked up and would be in our face for the rest of our trip east. This slowed our progress a bit but mercifully the waves were reasonable and the wind didn't make us work too hard. On the east end of Gaskin we found all of the campsites to be full so we were going to have to continue on to Horseshoe Lake. Before tackling the portage from Gaskin to Horseshoe, we decided on a quick lunch of peanut butter and jelly tortilla roll-ups--always a BWCA favorite of mine!

When we got to Horseshoe Lake we found the first campsite there also taken but the second one we saw was unoccupied and it looked like a keeper. It even had a pile of firewood ready (Thank You, cycle003!). About this time we saw our first sun of the trip! Our last night was going to be a good one!

After setting up camp it was time to try more fishing. Soon after, we watched the clouds return but long after that we still had not seen any fish out of Horseshoe. Then the clouds started leaking so it was time to retreat under the tarp and finish off some of our freeze-dried food for supper. The rain intensified and then lingered to well after dark but because of the ready-made pile of firewood, we were still able to have a nice fire in spite of the wet weather. Once we were convinced that one more chance at BWCA stargazing was just not to be on this trip, we hit our sleeping bags for the night.