Wednesday, September 26, 2018 Awoke to a cloudy, 40' morning with a 5-10mph wind out of the west. You will see as this report goes on that this type of morning weather will be the rule and not the exception, other than the temps which will slowly heading down. I must say that my 4 season tent seems to keep the temps 5-10' warmer than the outside air. So I ate breakfast, packed up and no sooner do I hit the water that I start to see slivers of blue in the gray sky. And with the gentle wind at my back I head east and north to the 180r Vera Lake portage. The beginning of this portage to Vera is a real heart pounder up hill that felt great and warmed me nicely and as I got to the top I was rewarded with warm sunshine and one heck of a view of Ensign. The top middle part of this portage is a beautiful, open, flat rock walk and then a down hill to Vera Lake. I must admit I like challenging portages that are hilly and dry, especially since I stopped bringing my aluminum canoe. With my Luci lamps attached to the front painter on the canoe, finally getting some sun they require I flew across Vera lake with an increasing wind at my back to the 55r Trader lake portage. This is a gradual easy uphill portage to Trader lake. This will also be the last time I see anyone on a portage for the remainder of my trip, and the last time I will be close enough to anyone to talk to them for the duration also, with the exception of my time spent at Voyageur Canoe Outfitter on Sag(days 16-18). Trader lake is a pretty little lake made even more beautiful by the glorious and rare appearance of that warm yellow thing glowing in the sky, and the wind blew me across it in no time to the 20r portage to Missionary Lake. Really the rest of the day was spent sailing across Missionary, Skoota, Dix and onto Spoon lake where I would camp at site #1416. Between the remaining lakes I just named were good portages of 180, 26, and 14 rods. The 180r From Missionary to Skoota was notable a very rocky and kind of a gloomy forest walk, not as steep as the Ensign to Vera, but not as pretty either. The camp site was a nice big open site, and I picked a nice tent pad off to the right and back of the camp kitchen area, that provided some relief from the wind that was slowly dying down. Lots of beaver and eagle activity in this area. I set out any gear that was damp in the now partly sunny gentle breeze and and ate supper. At 6pm it clouded over and started raining by 7pm. It was just over 6 hours of travel time today, and by the time it started raining I was well prepared for it and ready for the tent and a bit of reading. Even with the sun I had today my journal entry says we should rename this month Craptember and that the weather was very different from the last 10 years I have taken fall trips up in the BW. Little did I know that this was great weather compared to what was to come.