Today was the most laid-back day of the trip. The day started horribly for me, as I woke up with a horrible headache. I'm not sure if it was because of the cold....something I ate....who knows! But it was really painful. I could've accepted the skull cramps more had I been poundin down drinks the night before, but that wasn't the case. I get headaches frequently, and my pain threshold is pretty high. Everyone was out and about by 7 AM, but I took some time getting out of bed. The morning was overcast, but rather mild as temps were in the upper 40s by 9 AM. Dad made French toast and sausage for breakfast. After eating a little bit and taking some ibuprofen, I crawled back into the tent. I put my head down, lying on my left side with two of those hand-warmer packets on my temple which hurt. Before I knew it, I fell asleep and woke up. It was almost NOON but I felt like a million bucks! Sweet!

Everyone in camp had been trying their luck fishing. Ben and Chris canoed to the north and middle portion of Horse Lake. Jeff took his canoe out with Jacob. My dad tried a few casts from shore, but everyone caught the same thing. NOTHING! While I was sleeping, the rest of the clan saw other canoeists, who were staying up on the far northeastern side of Horse. Four middle-aged men in two canoes, they were headed down the Horse River to the Lower Basswood Falls. As by brother Ben told me, they were about 30 feet from our shore on the point, when one of the canoeists had a huge northern up to his canoeas he was about to pull it in, his line broke and it got away!! There was a lot of hootin and hollerin....and a few four-letter words. Our group wished them good luck at the falls, and that gave everyone hope that maybe the fish will start biting.

Jacob and Chris later collected more firewood. Our saw for cutting downed timber broke, but Dad improvised and fixed it with an S hook from a bungee strap, and you really had to be cautious when sawing. For lunch, Dad threw some cut up summer sausage and threw it on the griddle. We had PB-J sandwiches, chips, granola bars, Twizzlers, trail mix, and Kool-Aid. The sun peaked out on and off for a couple of hours in the early afternoon. I spent some time to myself by going on a little hike to the north of camp. I really liked Horse Lake because of its accessibility to so many other areas. We didn't have time to go to Moosecamp or Fourtown today, but in the future, I'd like to come back here for like a week or so. Early afternoon, a solo canoeist paddled by our camp and picked out the campsite about a mile north of us on the east side of the lake.

By around 3PM, it became overcast again. After breaking/splitting the firewood for the night, and having our fill of fishing without catching fish, Dad decided to test out his coordination skills. On the south side of our camp, a little red pine jutted about 25 feet almost parallel to the water. We joked earlier in the day about walking out to the edge of the tree. Now, if it were August, it would be a no-brainer to try it. But in late October, no thanks. But my Dad can't back down from a challenge, so he began to shimmy his way along the tree! As he went along, he just about fell into the lake a couple of times. He made it past the halfway point to the top of the tree, and then had to maneuver to turn himself around to get back off the stupid tree and on to dry land. The whole thing took him about an hour....it was comical! After that, Dad tried to get Chris to take a little swim off our beach (which was nice and sandy, alas chilly water). After getting all of us to give Chris a little money to swim with Grandpa, both Dad and Chris swam for about 15 minutes! As they were swimming, the fishing group we saw earlier paddled past our campsite. I'm sure they where wondering what they heck was going on with people swimming! We asked them how the fishing went, and they replied by saying it was a waste of time....they didnt get anything. I didn't feel so bad about being skunked yesterday at LBF now.

At about 5 PM, Ben and I decided to paddle to the south off our site to refill our water jugs, while casting a few lines at the same time. We had a good talk, going down memory lane about all of our past canoe trips, and about how much fun this one had been so far. Being out in the middle of that lake, with a slight breeze from the north, with gray skies, and casting my line, I am still in just amazement how the Natives and Voyaguers survived up here! It's so fun to just get a little taste of what it was like to be in the middle of a (controlled) wilderness with nothing but water, trees, rocks, unknown wildlife, and the sky above surrounding you. After casting for 30 minutes with out luck, Ben and I decided to make our way back. Just then, Ben let out a loud, Ohhh Boy! I turned around and his rod was bent like a sickle.....did he have a fish? He started to reel it in as he was reeling, I was excited beyond reason....what did he have? It was a struggle as Ben later said. After a couple of minutes.I could see ita HUGE northern! Ben managed to get it close to the canoe. I got out the net....As I leaned over the side, trying not to capsize the empty canoe to net the northern, I had it in the net under the water.as I lifted the net up and as I was about to grab it, it flopped out of the net, broke Ben's line, and got away..NOOOO!!!!! We were SO ANGRY! I could taste that sucker right when I saw it....what a tease. We both realized, too, that it might have been the same northern that escaped the wrath of our fishing neighbors. If so, jeepers....I didn't know fish had 9 lives!!!

As nightfall was upon us, we struck shore and beached our canoe. Everyone on shore heard our frustrating encounter with the one that got away. After a few laughs, we dug into our final supper of the trip, which is sort of a fun tradition weve always done on our final night. We buy several flavors of Ramen noodles, boil the noodles in our large cooking pot, and when the noodles are finished, we mix all of the flavors together and chow down. With cool temperatures, the Ramen tasted delicious! In the summer, Ramen isn't always the greatest meal, but it's handy because it's very light, it's cheap, and it fills you up beyond belief. Dad also unveiled an awesome surprise. He stuck a frozen two-liter of Mountain Dew in our styrofoam cooler! NECTAR FROM THE BWCA GODS! It helped the Ramen go down a lot smoother! I've never had soda pop in the BWCA---Dad said he had a little extra room, so he figured why not.

We enjoyed our final evening on Horse Lake with more stories, jokes, and laughs about our trip. It was a great evening, as there was no wind, and temps I'm guessing were right around 40. With the skies still cloudy, the moon was not visible totally, but the glow of it was apparent by around 8 PM. We had a little transistor radio, and we listened to the Yankees-Rangers game in the ALCS...and the Rangers won! Take that Yankees! Again...no wolves....and no bears thankfully. We all hit the sack at about 9:30 PM.~Horse Lake