Tuesday, August 22, 2017 I woke up that next morning so sore I nudged the 9yo and said I was all about base camping here a few days after all. He immediately popped up and said “But I wanted to see that campsite at Long Island Lake!” Okaaay…kids. Moving the 12yo took a little more convincing and I said I wasn’t going to go anywhere until I had a hot cup of coffee in my hand for 20min. It was already windy at 7:30am and I was not looking forward to the paddle across Cherokee. It was the 12yos turn to cook breakfast and he hates cooking, as he frequently repeated. It was 9:05 before the coffee was in my hand. We started across Cherokee staying east of as many islands as we could. We stopped at campsite 897 for the latrine and the boys scoped the site. Now the 9yo begged to stay here rather than moving on and the 12yo insisted on continuing to Long Island. Again, kids… We continued on, but left the option open of camping here the following night instead of on Long Island for the 2 nights we had planned. My research told me that Cherokee was a popular lake that we should expect to be crowded, but we only saw 1 other site occupied and 1 other paddling the whole time we were there. We headed thru Gordan Lake and ran into a couple whose picture I recognize from a trip report here, but couldn’t remember their screen name, so hi! If you are reading this. We muddled our way around the beaver dams and reached a fairly crowded Long Island Lake. We skipped the 1st unoccupied site in hopes of getting site 565. My 9yo had seen a few pictures of this site and really wanted to stay there. The site was open and it was exactly as the pictures indicated. We were all incredibly happy to have made the trek. We actually liked watching people come and go thru the sandy portage. I hung the hammock, took many pictures, but couldn’t convince the kids to go swimming since they were chilly and the 9yo had found a leech on him during the last portage. Oh well, I wasn’t willing to go in either. This time, we worked faster, earlier, and got everything set for the night by 7PM, again if “set” is a food bag that is at least moderately hard for a bear to get to. I think we would have been better off wrapping the rope repeatedly around the bags to slow him up. Like a puzzle game.