We got up around 7am even though exit would only take us roughly 4 hours, knowing we had a tow at 3pm that could probably come get us sooner if we can call them. We were surprisingly quick and were on the water at about 8:40am. It was sunny again, but a little windy.

We got to the Sucker Lake portage around 12:45pm, almost exactly 4 hours from Knife. Funny enough, we had a heck of a decent headwind on Birch and somehow still made it in 4 hours! We even took a wrong portage out of/into Seed (I think)! It was a nice day if not for the wind. We saw a few folks on their way in and chatted with them briefly.

At the Sucker landing, we hung out with two dudes waiting for their outfitter’s tow back, whom we chatted with for something like an hour. We were able to call W&H and get them to come get us, and ended up sharing a ride back with two lovely ladies just coming back from Prairie Portage. I mentioned that we had been up at Cherry, and the driver asked me if we got up to Lake of the Clouds. I wish I had been able to say yes, because we had the opportunity to go, and we didn’t. At least I have a reason to go back, as if I didn’t already - Cherry is beautiful.

We got back to the landing around 2:30pm, drank our cold beers, took our hot showers, and headed on our way back to Minneapolis. On our drive we noted sooo many more trees changing colors than we saw in the BWCA! We couldn't figure out why the colors were much stronger on the first hour of our drive than we saw in any lake we were in. We figured it has to do with the local climate, and maybe there is less stress on the trees in the BWCA so they change color slower.

We drove slowly, playing our favorite music, enjoying the beautiful weather for the drive home, reflecting on a good trip. Stick around for the reflections in the next and final part of this trip report.