Day 3 The next morning I am up with the sun, actually most of the night. Did not sleep for crap. I was the first one up and got the food pact down. A much easier task than getting the dam thing up in the air. We eat breakfast and break camp. Back into the tippy canoe. As if on que someone flipped the wind switch. As soon as Rob and I push off from shore we are tippier than yesterday. This time I am the captain. With every paddle stroke it felt like we are on the edge of going for an unplanned swim. With the white caps breaking all around us we could not even turn in the direction the rest of the fleet was headed as we were stuck in the middle of the lake cursing non- aluminum canoe we were in. This was our first time in a fake boat. (This is what my dad always called any canoe that was not aluminum) We finally got behind some islands and was able to make the turn towards were we should have been heading. In bicycle touring we call this a stupid lap. We work our way through some very shallow narrows to get over to the portage that would get us to Hudson. The first campsite off the portage looked like a good spot to grab lunch. Same as yesterday. We fished from shore a bit with a few strikes but could not get them to fully commit to be our lunch. As we shove off and get on our way we decide to troll down Hudson. This when Rob finds out we have performed yet another newbe mistake. His fishing pole is back at our lunch spot. Back we go. It was right were we (because we are a team) had left it when we helped the others load up from the shallow rocky shore. We were told the lakes were a good two feet down. We quickly get on our way and decide it would all be worth going ½ way back up the lake if we nailed a nice big part of our dinner. No such luck. Rob’s main goal on this trip was to get a big walleye. So as I bring us along a nice big drop off Rob says this is where his walleye is. He was 1/2 right. He did indeed get a walleye as the words were still floating across the water he gets a hit. I can’t believe it. He is some kind of fishing god I thought. It was just a wee little baby, barley bigger than the lure. I laugh every time I look at the picture. The rest of the group is way down the lake. I’m worried my dad is getting frustrated with our slow pace. We were in no particular hurry but my dad likes to keep moving. As we approach the portage that will get us to Ensign we catch up to Ben. He has landed a northern and a sunfish. The sunfish was too small to keep but the hooks did more damage than he would live to tell about. I believe that Ben’s wife Kim also had caught a nice bass. So we double portage over to Ensign fish in tow and rest a bit before we head off. We discuss our next campsite location. We will take the first site that is open. Next we find out that navigating with low water is difficult. It is amazing how much the landscape shapes change with low water. Solid land shows up where there should be islands. This can really turn a person around. We miss the site we were looking for which we end up finding a couple of days later while fishing. We head down a monster island while trolling and pick up another bass. He is too small to keep and we deicide that we have figured out where we were and double back to find a different campsite since the one we had originally wanted still eluded us. As we approach I bring us by a nice big cliff face hoping to get some more dinner. No luck there. Just as I bring us around what would become known as fishgut island I get snagged and before I could get my hands on my line it snaps. Just lost a 12 dollar lure and steel leader. Onto our new home. The wind took us in at a pretty good clip. We set up camp. Then the wind really picked up. We had to put Bens aluminum canoe up as a wind break for the fire pit to cook up the fish. It would stay there for the next 4 nights. Ben and Rob headed out to fishgut island to prep our dinner. The rest of us gathered fire wood and made preparations for dinner. After a nice windy dinner we spent the next hour or so trying to get the food barrel up high enough. Not the best trees for getting the food up high. This is when I decided that I would research other methods to deal with the food at night if I ever made a trip up here without my dad. He is dead set on hanging. I hid some vodka in the pack so that I could have a night cap. The first night I was not feeling it so I had mixed up a nice vodka lemonade before the hour long or better attempt to get our food secured above yogys reach. It was hard not to laugh as I know my dad hates it when he is frustrated but I find you have to laugh at 5 people pulling on ropes and pushing with paddles. The photos do not do it justice. There was a nice little outcropping on our site that we would become our nightly ritual of watching the sunset with my not so secret beverage. Kim had along 2 bags of wine as well. I also had my Ipod with a little speaker. All of this was things I know my dad might have a problem with. He has never had music or alcohol into the BWCA. I decided it was my vacation as well. To my surprise dad enjoyed both very much. We sat out as a group each night with the music playing some 60/70’s music very low. I know what most will think. It was only loud enough to be heard for about 5ft away from the speaker. This was my favorite part of the day, sitting watching the sunset beverage in hand with my brothers and dad in the BWCA. Only thing missing was my wife. I wish it could have lasted longer into the night but the Minnesota state bird forced us into our tents. This is also the time of the day when the breeze would disappear and it would get hot and sticky. The weather forecast for the first and second days was supposed to be warm and humid then a big cool down with some storms then the cool weather after that. It ended up doing the exact same thing every night. At sunset the breeze would completely disappear then the state bird would show up, then we would lay in the hot tent with no breeze until about 11 or midnight when the breeze would pick up only to bring just enough rain to force us to put the rain fly on and to make it extremely muggy.