Sunday, July 16, 2017 I woke to another sunny morning in the BW and I was growing evermore grateful for the amazing weather with each passing day. I have rarely experienced weather like this while in the BWCA, but this was also my first July trip, so maybe this weather was average for July. After another bowl of oatmeal and some tasty Via instant coffee, I started to pack up my stuff and clean up camp. I've read how lots of times a fire is one of the things that soloists often times neglect to have on their trips, but I had one on Oyster and every other day for that matter. I never once used my saw and didn't bring a hatchet, but I found plenty of scraps to build fires with at every campsite. There's something soothing about a fire in camp, so I had one this morning as I packed up my stuff before the 310 rod portage for Hustler Lake. After dousing my fire and checking for anything left behind, I set out for the portage to Hustler. With the high waters, I was forced to get back in the canoe about 70 rods down the portage trail as the swampy area was flooded. The rest of the portage went well and I didn't even take a break halfway because getting out to paddle across the swamp was break enough. Hustler is a beautiful lake, I paddled by two empty campsites before finally finding one occupied on the main part of the lake. I took my time crossing Hustler because I knew I had plenty of time to get wherever I would end up and with the way this trip was going, campsites weren't going to be hard to come by. The portage from Huslter to Ruby is super short, but it was still kind of hard to find. It's actually easy to see once you get there, but I just thought it was much farther south than it's actual location. Reaching Ruby was cool, there's an old log ramp of some sort just below the surface of the water that looks like it's from a logging company. If anyone knows more about this relic, I'd love to hear about it. I paddled across Ruby and hit my second long portage of the day, a 280 rodder into Lynx Lake. This portage was not bad at all, but the landing on the Lynx side was super rocky and made things difficult. Once out on Lynx, which I've heard has great fishing, I noticed something peculiar. Almost every campsite was occupied. So this is where everybody's been the whole time! Lol, it's funny, but seeing all of these people immediately made me miss my time on Fat and Finger, when I could carry on a conversation with myself and people wouldn't look at me like I was crazy. There's a tiny portage from Lynx to Little Shell Lake that I could paddle right through, then another shorty from Little Shell to Shell Lake. I got to paddle out and see the cool white rock that sits on a small island like it was delicately placed there by a giant. It's strange because I've seen pictures of this rock before, but I could never really appreciate it's bizarre beauty until the moment I paddled up to it in person. After a quick stop at the south Con Island campsite for lunch, and to debate with myself whether to camp there for the night, I decided to continue on and check out some other campsites before paddling on to Lower Pauness. At the portage landing, I found a pair of prescription glasses sitting in about 6 inches of murky water, I set them on a rock up on dry land hoping the owner will come back for his/her eyes. The portage had another section that I needed to paddle across, this one surprised me a little, but was no big deal. This was the day I started to see lots of groups, the landing on the Lower Pauness end was congested with groups heading for Shell Lake. There was a father/son duo just waiting in the water for a big group with 3 canoes to get done. We chatted for a minute and the father said he was thinking about getting a solo boat and had a few questions about how much I liked mine. Seeing a father/son team got me excited for taking my son on his first trip this fall. We will be going in October for a long weekend with my dad, so it will be 3 generations tripping together. I'll be sure to write up a report for that trip as well. Anyway, I took the point campsite that's just around the corner from the portage to Shell, just as another group of "Sconnies" paddled by heading to the portage. I wished them well on their trip and they asked me how my trip was going. I couldn't believe the amount of gear some of these groups had with them, I think I actually saw a hard sided wheeled cooler in one canoe. After setting up camp, I paddled up to have another look at Devil's Cascade, because on my trip in it was raining and I didn't get any good footage during the rain as I was more focused on covering ground. I got some video and when I got to the north end of the portage there was a YMCA group unloading their 2 canoes. Since all I had in my hand was my fishing rod, I offered to carry one of their packs back with me. They said no thanks, I must have given the group leader a perplexed look, because he starting explaining that it's camp policy. I was surprised, but I tip my hat to them for doing things without any assistance. Back at camp I cooked up a Mountain House breakfast skillet and scooped it into some tortillas for some tasty breakfast burritos! Wow, that was awesome. I would have had fish with it, but I Long Distance Released two smallmouth bass in the span of 10 minutes during my only fishing of the day. There was a family camped on the other campsite on the west side of the lake from me. The seemed to be having fun swimming, and that reminded me that I wanted to take a "bath" before exiting on Monday so I hopped in. I used some camp soap back by the tent pads to suds up after getting out of the lake and dumped a couple Nalgenes worth of water over myself to clean up. That was refreshing and I smelled like citronella the rest of the night, bonus. As the sun went down, I could hear yelling and hooting and hollering and it took me a while to realize that it was coming from the next lake over, Upper Pauness. Someone over there was having one heck of a good time for most of the evening. It didn't affect my quality of sleep however, as I was sacked out by 9:30. ~Oyster Lake, Hustler Lake, Ruby Lake, Lynx Lake, Little Shell Lake, Shell Lake, Lower Pauness Lake