On Thursday morning we woke up, had breakfast, and revisited the "conversations" Jaden had with me in his sleep. Every night of the trip, including the night at Fall Lake, he woke me up 2 or 3 times while dreaming. Most of the time it was unintelligible, but last night I was woke with a "Dad, Dad, Dad! What's out there, do you hear that?" He was even sitting up while he said this. After assuring him there was nothing out there, he simply said "Ok" laid back down and went back to sleep. When I asked him about it in the morning, he just said "I don't know, I must have been dreaming about a bear or something". Good times.

We paddled Good Creek up to Hoist Bay, and it was very overgrown with wild rice, almost to the point of being impassable at the Hoist Bay end.

There were also 2 extra beaver dam pullovers to deal with, and bank to bank lily pads to paddle through, We both agreed the portage to the other end of Good Lake would be an easier way to return with the water levels as low as they were (it was).

We fished Hoist Bay along with 4 other motorboats (ugh...) and Jaden caught the 2nd northern pike of his life. It was a nice fat 29" fish, which he promptly refused to hold for a picture. He caught many other pike during the trip though and held several of them, just none nearly as big as the Basswood pike. Oh well, mission accomplished- he wanted to catch pike and he did!

We checked out the old dock area by 4 mile portage and the sunken steam engine, which was further above the water level than I had seen in the past.

Jaden thought it was pretty cool to see some of the history of the area and learn about what was done here in the past. He did recommend that someone should come with a helicopter and take that engine out of the water though. Ah the mind of an 11 year old!

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful, but we did entertain ourselves for quite a while watching two chipmunks that had been hanging around since the time we arrived the day before. They would bounce from rock to rock, onto the bench, firegrate, log pile, and our gear bag with ease all while coming within inches of us without worry. Jaden thought they would make a great parkour team.

We listened to the weather radio, heard the words "frost advisory" and figured that was enough to know. It had been cold when we woke up this morning (47-48), but tomorrow was promising to take that to a whole new level.