"To Little Sag or Not to Little Sag? That is the question."

The answer was not to Little Sag and I think we both regret it.

The previous evening had been dry and a little warmer. The weather was shifting into something more favorable, but we were a day and a half behind our original plan and concerned that we had no more room for error in what had been an over reaching trip plan. I decided that I would call this trip "A Lake Too Far" in homage to the book "A Bridge Too Far". Just like the Allies did with Operation Market Garden, we'd bitten off just a little more than we could chew. But the victors write history, so we both decided that within 48 hours of arriving back home we'd look back fondly at a successful trip. Up to now, it was taking on the tenor of a death march and we didn't want it to go that way.

Up and at 'em we, portaged into Terry and on into Mora. We debated Little Sag one more time. The weather was now high 50s, climbing into the 60s with sun. It was a beautiful day, but the last 3 days of cold rain (4 counting the drive up) kept us from heading west into Little Sag. We decided we'd do a short day and spend the night on Hub. We'd do a fire for the first time all trip and break out the cocktails while the sun was still up. We were due for a relaxing day.

On Whipped, we stopped at the lone campsite for lunch. It was a beautiful day with scattered clouds and little breeze. The lake was nearly like glass. As my grandfather used to say, "It feels so nice out, I think I'll leave it out." We sat near the fire ring and just shot the bull while we ate way too much for a lunch. It was nice to not have all the rain gear on while water ran off the brim of your hat. 

We hit Hub after a thigh burning 300 rod portage, ready to call it a day and enjoy ourselves. Only one problem. We couldn't find a camp site without widow makers above each site. Not entirely true, I guess. One of the 3 sites had extensive wind damage and there wasn't a tree standing that was large enough to hang a hammock. All the blow downs had been felled, so a tent would have worked, just not my hammock. We decided to move onto Mesaba. The 105 rods into Mesaba was flat with a few blowdowns, but they didn't need to be cut. We could just step over them. It was probably in the low 60s now and the sun was shining. After the second and final trip across the portage, I looked down and saw 4 ticks crawling across my pants. Permethrin would do them in shortly, but I hadn't treated my brown fleece jacket that I had tied around my waist. I pulled it off and proceeded to pick 11 ticks off of it. The only way I saw a lot of them was catching the shine off of them in the sun. This was the first time I'd had ticks on me the entire trip.

Mesaba is a beautiful lake and we got the south facing site (858). This isn't much of a site. Only one real tent pad, which was fine because I had a great hanging spot. The wind started to die down as the sun got lower and the bugs were out in force. Nothing biting, but lots of little black fly looking things. The ticks at this site were horrible. After dinner, we both retreated to our shelters to escape the bugs and ticks. Happy again for permethrin.

If you look closely, you can see the repair we did to the canoe.

~Crooked Lake, Tarry Lake, Mora Lake, Whipped Lake, Fente Lake, Mesaba Lake