We woke up in the early morning hours to rain falling on our heads. We got up and attached the rain fly to the tent (it was too hot to have it on there if we didn’t need it). Rain started coming down harder as day broke. Matt asked what we should do, and I said that we should travel. He was unconvinced until we started getting water in the tent. I put on my rain suit and started packing up camp outside while Matt packed up our sleeping bags and mattresses inside the tent. We pushed off at about 7:30 or so after an easy breakfast of bagels and dried fruit. The rain had died down a bit.

Between the rain and Matt’s lack of desired footwear, it was pretty clear that we would try to have a big day today and be able to avoid a fourth night of camping. We only had to paddle about 10 minutes before coming to the portage between the Tin Can Mike and Horse lakes. The landing was decent, but the mosquitoes were out in full force. We unloaded quickly and got on the move, but the entire trail was pretty buggy. The landing on Horse lake had even more mosquitoes, and my rain suite didn’t seem to stop them from trying to bite through. We kept moving in our hot rain suits just to minimize our time with the bugs.

We were very glad to be on Horse Lake, and we then set on to find the mouth of the Horse River which we did in about 20 or 30 minutes. The river was beautiful. Because of the rain, I had packed all of my camera gear in water proof bags in my camera bag, and I packed the camera bag in our personal Duluth pack. Short story: no pictures during the day. I had expected three portages, and I had expected it to take us the better part of the day to get down the Horse. It turned into four portages with a few very shallow parts that we probably should have portaged around. The portages were muddy, rocky, buggy, and hot. But they weren’t too long – it was just a lot of packing and unpacking. Our paddling time on The Horse was actually quite short with the portages coming faster than I would have expected. By then end of our final portage on The Horse, we were really done with the bugs. The final push into the mouth of Basswood River was filled with lily pads and reeds.

We were VERY happy to finally get to Basswood river and (finally) escape all of the bugs. We didn’t see anybody on the Horse River. Hmm… We made it across the wide bay of the Basswood River and were at the Canadian portage around the beautiful falls in no time flat. This portage was short but in TERRIBLE condition. Overall, I was glad we opted for the short portage, and the bugs were non existent (I don’t know if it was time of day or location). After our first trip with the canoe and our personal pack, we decided to have lunch in Canada at the bottom of the falls around which we were portaging. I was really bummed that my camera was on the other end of the trail, but I wasn’t so disappointed that I wanted to run back and get it. Lunch and the lack of mosquitoes were good for our spirits.

Once we pushed off from the top of the falls, we were gearing up for our final (we thought) big (more than mile long) portage. Originally, I had anticipated possibly finding a camp site along this stretch before the big portage. The sites were beautiful (with beautiful views) and unoccupied, but we didn’t even discuss staying. It was early afternoon, and we knew that we could sleep in a real bed on Thursday night if we were able to finish the big portage today. This was, by far, one of the more beautiful stretches of the trip, though.

We got to what we thought was the big portage within about an hour. Matt led the way, but the trail just led us to a campsite after just a short time. We stumbled around a bit and then finally put our stuff down to check the map. Yep. This was just one short portage before the big boy. We had to put back into the river for just a short distance to get to the big boy. So we did. Another group was sitting at the landing and resting.

We unloaded, and Matt’s knee was killing him. We sat and drank some water before pushing on. I knew we were in for a long one when after about three minutes I passed a kid coming the other way who asked me in a desperate voice, “how long have you been on the trail?” When I told him “just a few minutes” I could tell that he was quite relieved – he was almost done. The trail was O.K., but there were some steep and tricky spots (hopping from stone to stone across a little creek, for example). We were both pretty damn tired by the time we got done with our first trip, and this was the busiest portage trail that we encountered on the trip. We slowly pushed back along the trail which now seemed difficult without any packs. The chaffing had also begun to make walking a little extra uncomfortable (lesson learned: bring Vaseline or something for the inside thighs). I had to stop on the way back to rest as our equipment pack was killing my back. That was the most sore part: my back muscles. I pushed on with Matt in front of me, and I don’t really know how I did it. One step at a time.

When we got to the landing of Basswood Lake, we were both pretty happy. It was getting a bit late in the afternoon (4 PM or so), and a couple was just landing their canoe and equipment (they were going to have a LONG evening). Matt and I put in and started passing full campsites much to our disappointment. We wanted nothing more that to get to an empty camp site so that we could get our chores done and collapse. The only saving grace was that every paddle we took now was one fewer paddle we would have to take tomorrow. We finally found a campsite that was within view of another, but it was available and the mosquitoes were down. There was a beaver hiding under a big rock as we landed our canoe, and we heard him all night jumping into the lake and swimming over to the dam just a few hundred feet off of our site.

Matt tried to build a fire, but the day’s rain had rendered all of the choice wood pretty useless, and it was also clear that neither one of us were going to be up much later than we had to be and enjoy a fire, so we aborted. I set up the tent, and Matt set up the kitchen. Tonight was lasagna night with some kind of raspberry torte dessert. Both were prepared with boiling water in the pouches, and nothing has ever tasted so good. We lay down on the rock next to the lake and rested our back muscles and wondered how we would ever get up again. After a quick clean up of the few dinner dishes, Matt made his preparations to go to bed. I stayed up and got a few dusk photos and set up my tripod for some star trail photography later that evening (the clouds were finally pushing off to the northeast). I went to bed and fell asleep quickly.