We awoke to a cold but perfect morning on day four. I slipped on my boots and flannel shirt and headed out to take pictures of the morning sunlight dispelling the morning mist. I built a roaring fire and then called Grandpa out. We sat by the fire. I pulled out my guitar and we sang all our favorite songs. After a peanut butter bagel breakfast, we enjoyed another devotional time together and then headed out on a little day trip to see American Point and fish the bay next to it. Grandpa had camped on the first of the two American Point camp site on his BWCA trips back in the seventies.

After an uneventful paddle, we pulled the canoe up on shore and strolled through the camp site. It was much more wooded with some enormous white pines that clearly had been there for many years. We then set up our fishing poles with some rapalas and began trolling through the bay. I hooked onto a hammer handle northern. It put up a good fight, every bit as strong as my bass, and was fun to catch.

We paddled back to camp and headed in for a swim. The water was cold but refreshing after a long paddle, maybe a half hour each way with the wind. I couldn’t get enough of our camp site – the perfect sand beach made for a wonderful swim.

As I was relaxing in the water, my crazy grandpa walked out of the water, walked over to the clothes line, took off all of his clothes, and hung them up on the line. “Get in the tent!” I yelled. “There’s no one out here, Joe, it’s fine!” he said with a smirk. Thankfully, he headed in and got dressed. I didn’t want some tow boat to come screaming by and seeing him au natural on shore. We only saw a handful of boats on the lake throughout our trip and were able to get plenty of quiet times in listening to the sounds of the forest.

The wind picked up later in the day. For some reason it made me a little antsy and I carefully packed up all of our gear after our dinner, which was made up of odds and ends left over from the previous dinners. We sat and talked, enjoying the sun set, before turning in early so we could get an early start while Saganaga was calm.