Got up at 5:45am to the alarm on my cheap waterproof Casio wristwatch. Slept poorly due to wooden bunks with thin pads. Got ready quick, waited for friend “F” to unplug the 10 things he was charging overnight. We saw a crazy reckless driver on the way up to Ely, and even called 911 to report him because his driving was that dangerous (swerving with I swear 1ft of clearance). Saw 2 foxes on the road up from Ely to E&H which was a first for both of us, and put us in high spirits.

Anyway, we had breakfast, eggs and bacon and hash browns, coffee and OJ. Got the tow by 8:30m but one of the staff members who loaded the boat with our gear forgot to grab paddles (and the Crazy Creek chairs, we later realized) so we had to head back about 10 minutes into the tow. Someone should have realized earlier, I should have, but it was kind of funny - tow driver shouts “HEY…… DID YOU GUYS GRAB PADDLES...????” And I look in the front of the boat, and I look in the back of the boat, and sure enough, no paddles. I just grinned at him and shouted “NOPE!”. We turned around and grabbed paddles, not a big deal really.

We hit the Sucker portage and were on Birch paddling at 9:33am, literally the same spot and same minute I checked when we started on my June trip. Saw a few people at the portage waiting for their tow. We did various lakes and portages and considered stopping early on Knife like in June. The travel down Birch, Carp, Melon, Seed was pretty easy just like in June as well.

Every site we saw was taken or crappy (not using the term lightly). We pushed to SAK and got a spot on the southern tip of the big island with multiple sites around 5:15pm. We were tired and desperate but it was a decent site for sure. We immediately began setting up camp with a sense of urgency, since we were also hungry and wanted to get our steaks going before dark. We both got our hammocks up in about 15 minutes and I got to the steaks, onion, and hash browns. Not having time to get firewood, we did the steaks on my MSR stove in a frying pan with vegetable oil. I would not do it this way again due to how much the oil sputtered. It completely covered my windscreen and was a pain to clean off of everything (including our dish rag). I was worried about everything, like my shoes, my wristwatch, my pants smelling like oil and steak. We tried to wash things the best we could using Camp Suds, but it’s hard to get oil off everything. We ended up being able to fit all of our dishes and the smelly stuff in a thick dry bag that F brought, which we were both very happy he did.

Much to my relief, we had no problems with wildlife through the night. I have read about bears in the SAK so yeah, I was glad we didn’t have to deal with a bear. Slept decently for my first night ever in my hammock, despite waking up almost a dozen times. Forgot to mention, but the weather was excellent all day. Clear blue skies with a nice cool breeze.