We woke up a little earlier on Tuesday, sometime between 5:30 and 6:00, quickly ate breakfast, packed camp, and hit the water. Rain was again in the forecast, making getting moving and set at our new destination a priority. We were headed over to Iron Lake, knowing we might have an issue finding a site on that lake. Once out of Boulder Bay and past Tiger Bay, we switched course due to favorable wind direction and headed up to Warrior Hill. We paddled along side the length of it, looking for the pictographs and never found them, only to remember a short while later that they are a couple miles further north up the island. Oh well, we didn't have time to backtrack as we wanted to get across Bottle Portage and into Iron to find a site as early as possible. We met a couple groups on the Bottle River, one of which had left the northernmost site just a few minutes earlier. We filed that info away in case we needed it, but headed through the rest of the lake searching for a site- the next 2 west side sites looked full, 3 Island's sites were full, as were the sites south of 3 island and the site on the island north of Peterson Bay. We pushed back north and east and found the site near Curtain Falls also full. We checked the bay south of there, and took the farthest east site on the lake. Thankfully it was open, because we really didn't want to head all the way back to the NW corner of the lake (which we found out the next day from talking to people ended up being taken by another group behind us while we were searching for a site).

At first the site did not impress us, despite its out of the way location and its sandy beach landing. Over the next few days it really grew on us and in the end I would stay in it again. However, it is small, we had just enough space to set up two tents on the slightly sloping tent pads and the kitchen area was kind of a train wreck (later rectified). A bigger tent or larger group would be pretty uncomfortable at this site. We also gave the site the nickname "Protozoa Bay" as there was nowhere to get water for cooking or dishes from the edge without scooping up literal thousands of tiny aquatic creatures. We're still not sure what they were (water fleas, maybe, but they seemed too fast for that), but we just made sure to boil our water a little extra longer and filter water well away from shore.

We also had our one negative moment of the trip at this site- another tandem group was looking for a site and had banked on our site being open so they could get up early and head to Crooked the next morning. They said "every site was full", but there honestly was no room at our small site. We in the end turned them away as it was still only 11:00 am and they could have easily pushed on to Crooked yet that day (and probably did). If circumstances had been different- a bigger site, later in the day, bad weather approaching, our answer would have been different I'm sure.

After taking longer than planned and spending some extra energy trying to find a site, we took it slow in the early afternoon and just hung out at camp. Bad choice, as that nice part of the day turned into a steady rain by mid-afternoon. So we did what you're supposed to do on rainy afternoons- we slept. And damn did it feel good! We woke up around dinner time, refreshed and ready to go. We ate a quick meal, then headed out to fish a nearby island/reef area, which became our go-to spot over the next 3 days. Other than very early in the morning and in the late evening, this reef area was always windy/wavy, and I would have loved to fish it with less wind, but it sure did produce when we could hold on spot. We caught several nice pike (32" was the biggest), a couple smallmouth bass, and plenty of walleyes both jigging and trolling rapalas around it. The best part- it was close to camp and required almost no work to get to it.

We took in an amazing sunset on the water that night, fishing until almost 10:00 PM. We headed back in and finished the night with more stories, introspection (aka bullshitting), campfire time, and Captain and Coke. We stayed up a bit too late that night, but oh well, maybe our bodies with let us sleep in for once.