Adventure? Who Said Anything About THAT?
by WonderMonkey
We landed on the South side of Prairie Portage and did the groups (as a group) very first portage. On the other side of the portage, I went into the Ranger station and let them know this was my first time and that I hoped I had done everything well. The two Rangers (male, female) were very helpful, and I had everything I needed, and I had remembered a credit card for payment. One of the Rangers went to landing and gave the group an overview. I could tell that the Ranger was not a fan of hammocks and urged us to use buffer sticks between the straps and the trees.
Though I have my compass in the thwart bag, I prefer to use it as a backup and like to navigate by matching the terrain to my map. I'm not used to navigating on the water, so I wanted to practice. At our first decision point, I thought I had figured out where we needed to go, but JS said something different. We paddled over to look at his map, but he said he didn't have one and he was going by memory. I deferred to what I was reading on the map, and we headed in the right direction.
The portage from Baylee Bay into Burke Lake was very easy. Sandy beach landing and mostly flat and sandy trail.
The portage out of Burke Lake into some no-name lake wasn't challenging.
The portage from the no-name lake into North Bay was rocky and an up then down but other than the danger of slipping and falling it wasn't too bad. If it were wet, it would have been more difficult.
By the end of the portage into North Bay, some in the group were starting to show stress. Nobody was complaining, but though we did not have a "leader," I organized the trip and took it upon myself to pay attention to things and to speak up when I thought I needed to. A campsite on the upper part of North Bay was our minimum target. If it were reasonable to do so, I would have liked to get to Isabella to make the next days trip much more relaxed. I could tell the group was not going to make it to Isabella, so I suggested that we decide now to stay at a site on North Bay. All agreed. We headed off in the direction of campsite 134 and 135 and Mikey, and I checked out a few islands along the way.
Campsite 135 would have worked, but we were thinking of trying to go over near Lost Bay to get further along our intended path. We headed out from the protected area of campsite 135 and started across the bay. The wind had picked up, and the waves were beginning to build, so I decided we were NOT going to cross the bay. We could have hugged the shoreline, but the sites we were at were "good enough." We decided to check campsite 588 and thought it would be best. While looking about Mikey took a trail and found campsite 13A, which I liked better.
On campsite 13A, we set things up and then ate. That night we sat on a large rock and watched the sky. There were minimal clouds that evening, and the sky really popped. We don't get that in our area of Ohio. While we were waiting for it to get dark, my nephew caught a few fish, which is the main reason he came on the trip.
While sitting on the rock, being quiet and watching the sky, Mikey and I enjoyed three Nalgenes of beer that we had picked up from a brewery near where I lived. We had sunk them in the lake when we arrived to cool them down a bit. We WERE going to save them and have one per night, but we got a bit of momentum and had them all. Not sure if the heat would have killed them anyway, so why not be safer than sorry? Safer, of course, so we had them all. The only downside is that now we had three empty Nalgenes, but two of them had an on-going purpose, so actually I had just one that I had to carry around for no reason. We strategized on this a bit during the trip.
At the end of the night, I journaled in my hammock. It was an excellent way to end the day.
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