Saturday, June 22, 2019 Woke up a little earlier than we did the day before, maybe around 8am. Per usual, made a morning fire, oatmeal, and got the coffee going. After breakfast we took our time to re-pack up and start the journey to Johnson Falls and then to Caribou Lake. Once we got packed up and headed to the west side of Pine, we started noticing a lot of traffic around the portage. It was nice to see, what looked to be families out there together. Nothing you like seeing more than parents introducing their children to the BWCA.

This was where we made our 1 navigation mistake. For some reason when we looked at the map, we thought that Johnson Falls was along the switchback portage from Pine Lake to Paddle Lake. So we unloaded there and grabbed our swimsuits and headed up that portage. Only to find that Johnson Falls were not there. We walked back to Pine and took another trail that went along Pine Lake. As we took that trail, we also noticed there was another landing spot on Pine Lake for folks wanting to visit the falls. Needless to say though, we found the falls after a bit of a walk and we were able to take a swim in the falls. This short trip is well worth it. The falls are beautiful and it's a great place to rinse off after a few days in the woods.

Due to our navigational error and extra time re-organizing our packs back at Pine Lake, we probably lost a couple of hours of time and we started to worry that we might not be able to get a camp site. We quickly completed the two portages on Little Caribou lake to get to Caribou Lake. The first two sites on the far east side were taken, as was the one on Little Caribou. And with the amount of traffic we saw on Pine Lake, we thought we were going to have to make the portage to either Deer Lake or Moon Lake if Caribou was full. But, our prayers were answered as one of the best sites on the lake was available. We took the site closest to the middle of the lake and quickly set up camp so we could eat and get some fishing in before sundown. We had some luck fishing from the shore. One of the guys in our group caught a huge pike. As the sun was setting, we went out in the boats and tried fishing directly on the other side of the lake. However, we did not have any luck and went back to the site and enjoyed the fire, some trail mix, and star watching.