We got up early and made sure to have a substantial breakfast of flaxseed oatmeal and GORP and coffee, which I had time to make while F was still in the final phases of taking down and packing up all of his stuff, which I had come to accept. I took some time to take some photos of the gorgeous sunrise - you can't not, when it's this good. It was hard to leave this place.

We headed out of Amoeber into Little Knife and paddled all the way down Knife and get a spot on the west end of Knife for our last site. We trolled the whole way and I hooked into a nice ~18” smallmouth that put up a really nice fight. It ended up being the only fish of the trip, which was kind of a bummer, but we didn’t get completely skunked so it was more OK. It was cloudy all day, with different layers of thick clouds, with no wind whatsoever. It was in the high 60s, maybe it topped out at 70 that day. Paddling in a t-shirt, with no wind, I was sweating a bit. A light breeze would have been nice, but it was still awesome.

We saw a lot of loons on our paddle down, calling to each other, diving and surfacing. Some of them let us get really close. It was a really, really nice paddle. Something about it was special to me. The Canadian side was burned for a lot of it. There’s a nice narrow spot between Little Knife and Knife that is very picturesque.

One thing I haven’t mentioned at all yet for this trip? Bugs! You know why? It’s NOT because they don’t bother me! They love me! But they’re basically nonexistent! I was able to wear a t-shirt like 75% of the trip! The weather was perfect.

We got to our site at the bend of a cliffside on west Knife around 1:30 or 2pm and found it quite decent. It would be great for large groups, with a huge mostly flat area that also accumulated water quickly during rain (as we found out). The site had unfortunately been abused, with many places where limbs of live trees had been cut off, and bushes removed. I felt bad thinking one spot would make a good place to hang my hammock, once I noticed the damage to the trees. I ended up hanging it anyway since it was one of the only places, and I wanted to use it again before the end of the trip.

It turned out that you can hike up the cliffside by our site (that's where the latrine is - up!). We hiked up a bit and didn't find some epic lookout point, but we did get some nice views regardless. We commented how you could almost hang a hammock between some of the trees up there and get a nice view out at the lake.

We decided to try fishing that evening with some dark clouds far away, knowing we might only have 15-20 minutes. We went out and trolled east and back, for literally about 20 minutes, before we heard thunder and booked it back to the site. I noticed there were no more canoes on the lake like we had seen earlier in the day!

What followed was a crazy thunderstorm, with 40-50mph gusts and huge pelting raindrops, that lasted for about 20 minutes as it blew through the lake. My friend and I had our raingear on and just stood out in camp enjoying the craziness, hooting and hollering with nature. Whiskey may or may not have been involved!

After the storm passed, a lot of the puddles it formed soaked right into the ground over 10-15 minutes. We made dinner on the stove and got it cleaned up before dark. We sipped some whiskey and hung out for a bit, then listened to the weather radio to see what the following days may hold. There was something like a 60% chance of thunderstorms both the next day and the day after that. We decided that leaving early was better than getting “stormbound”, and chose to leave the next day. We headed to bed around 8:30pm or so.