Thursday, August 24, 2017 The morning gave us a pretty fog: Day 4 was long. My 12yos name is Jack, so he was determined to get us to camp on Jack Lake. But, my 9yo wouldn’t get out of bed without lots of prodding (lecturing, yelling, etc. this trip was not a vision of ideal parenting) and we didn’t set off until 10:30AM. Yes, the 140 rod to Sitka Lake was tough. It was up and down and we needed to 2 man the canoe over a boulder, but I wouldn’t let this portage deter anyone from this route. If a 38yo non-muscular, small frame girl and 2 kids can do it, so can you. We actually talk more negatively of the muddy portages than the hilly ones. I almost lost my shoe twice on other portages, and that would be from fabric ripping, not a loose shoe. We pulled in site 928 at 5:30PM with no water left for the day. The gravity filter we were using was barely dripping anymore so we chanced the lily pad water of Jack, used the backup pills we had and went to start dinner. We couldn’t get the stove to light. Fuel was not empty, but would not flow. Darn. I was never good at cooking over a fire, so I put the boys on the task as I tackled the bear rope, etc (ha! – even with good trees…). They shocked me with giving me a fully cooked chicken and rice in 45min. I was now ready to call this trip a complete success.