"No whammies, no whammies, no whammies"

No rain this morning, but another night that dipped into the 30s. We took our time breaking camp and had breakfast before pushing off around 8:30. At this point, we're way off our itinerary and we decided to just kind of go like hell and see what happened. We had an extra day built into the schedule, so no need to panic. We were wondering if we could push and get back on schedule to make up for yesterday. We were so optimistic first thing in the morning.

Yesterday in our mad rush to make up time, I'd thought rib was Cross Bay and was wondering out loud where the portage into Snipe was. "The portage should be on the west side at the end of a finger running WSW". As a result of my momentary confusion, I was now the brunt of my partners good natured joking and prodding about my navigation skills. Tripping with him was great. We work together, share the same twisted sense of humor and enjoy hanging out. This trip was just more of the same, away from cell phones, email and deadlines.

Into the cut off of Cross Bay to the Snipe portage and we ran into a beaver dam to get over. Snipe saw us get a little rain. Then it was 100 rods into Copper Lake, but there was a short paddle mid portage. On to Hubbub Lake and Howl Swamp Portage. Any thoughts we had of getting back on schedule were quickly dashed. Lots of fresh blow downs on the portage meant that we had to break out the saw for the first time. We came upon Tuscarora late in the afternoon. This was supposed to be our destination for the previous evening's camp. We just kind of laughed and decided that we were doing all right for our age, my momentary lapse in map reading skills, his ability to flip a canoe and my knack for poking holes in kevlar.

Tuscarora was beautiful. A golden sand beach to launch from was nice. We had a little bit of sun that made a short appearance as we ate some snacks. The wind from the north was beginning to pick up and we'd have some nice broadside waves for the paddle across to the portage into Owl. We met people for the first time since Day 1 on that portage. A pleasant British couple who chatted with us for a moment and then we went our separate ways. I believe they were on their way to Missing Link.

Before pushing off into Owl, we looked at the map and decided we'd want to take a good site on Crooked if there was one. If not, we'd head to Mora. Little Sag was out of reach today. We'd had long days so far, never getting into camp before 6. We'd had visions of setting up camp every day between 3 & 4, roaring fires, cocktails and starry nights. So far, it had been the opposite experience.

We hit Crooked and started checking out campsites. Crooked falls on the edge of a burn. 5 sites are marked on the map and we think only 2 aren't burnt out. We ended up staying at the site on the south end of the large island (514). Not a great site, but it was high up off the water and had lots of room with a nice view to the south southeast.