Slept in until 7:30 a.m. or so to clear and quiet skies! YAY!!! No more rain. Our canoe however was covered in snow where our daughter promptly decided to play in it thus getting wet hands again, but we are all hopeful we can move today!

We made the decision last night instead of portaging our crap all the way into Horse Lake we would stay on the east side of Fourtown.

We bid farewell to Fairy Lake and got on the portage to Boot. It went pretty good. A few wet spots, but the paddle on Boot was beautiful! Sadie decided to fall/jump out of the canoe, but she had her life jacket on and Jason missed just one paddle stroke and scooped her up by her handle. The portage to Fourtown was a breeze! We single portaged both times. Saw two girls heading towards Boot and one was named MiniMN also! My MiniMN was pretty impressed that two girls were out by themselves! I told her once she turns 13- 14 that maybe we can do a trip by ourselves!

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The first two sites on Fourtown directly out of Boot on the left were taken by what appeared to be boy scouts. The wind was blowing strong and there were lots of white caps. I had become a “professional” knee paddler so I felt ok with the waves. We got to the other side of Fourtown Lake straight across from Boot to start looking for a new site. The first few sites were okay but didn’t really ike them and decided to keep going south and saw another free site high up on some rocks. Paddled to the other side and I got out. It was okay, but still didn’t feel perfect.

The next site was taken, and finally tucked in on the way to Horse Lake was a beautiful site with a sandy beach to boot! Beautiful, multiple flat tent pads, and a new non-broken potty! (The one at Fairy had a screw loose).

Not as many nice trees for hanging but TONS of dry dry wood for a fire! The site was right on some rapids for nice white noise and was on an unmarked portage. We can see why some people rated this only 3 stars on bwca.com – but I think mostly because of the foot traffic, but we didn’t mind seeing other people.

We had mac and cheese for lunch and tons of it! We ate like ravishing kings! Mac & cheese is definitely a great mood builder!

We tried fishing and again, no luck! Grrr. Fished the entire mini lake/pond between Fourtown & Horse. Came back to camp to make dinner – Mountain House – Beef Stroganoff and a Cache Lake Garlic Bread. MiniMN said her stroganoff wasn’t good, and I told her to suck it up and eat it – until I took a bite… and then I said, um, MiniMN – you don’t have to eat this! The bread was a little tricky so we ended up having pudding for dinner! MiniMN thought that was great! Luckily we had so much mac and cheese at 3pm we weren’t that hungry anyways.

After dinner chores were done we got a nice roaring fire going and stayed up until the stars were in full swing. I laid out on the rocks and called it a star party. The song Oceans by Hillsong United were playing in my head as clear as day as if it were actually playing! Looking up at the skies I knew this was exactly where I was meant to be. I had never seen so many stars in my life due to the lack of moon.

Tonight – we go to sleep to an orchestra of loons, the rush of the rapids below, and the beaver fishing and slapping his tail.