My actual route was LAC, McCree, Iron, Crooked, Gardner Bay, Hurn Elk, Ted, No Names around Ted, Milt, Newt, Little Newt, Gardner Bay, Wednesday Bay, Bart, Craig, Robinson, Tuck, Sarah, Side, Point, Isabella, Dell, Shade, Noon, Summer, Sultry, Silence, Agnes, Kawnipi, Shelly, Alice, Chatterton, Russell, Sturgeon, March, Bentpine, Claire, Burntside, Jean, Conk, Quetico & Beaverhouse. I did shorten it as the weather was unforgiving.

The weather was certainly different. Last year I had hard rain for 2 hours in 23 days. This year I hardly saw the sun. It rained nearly everyday and it hardly ever got above 65 degrees with a lot of nights around 40. It was great weather for portaging except for the rain. I never really got hot and for the most part I stayed dry and had a fire every night. The fishing was not great except for bass which were big and plentiful. I did get all the species but not a lot of walleye and not a forty inch northern. I guess I got about 20 lake trout.

Some of the creeks were amazing. For example Claire creek which I had to walk and then portage last time I was there had over four feet of water and the Beaverhouse portage flooded so I had to canoe the last 100 yards. It probably would have been a great year to go up the Lemay Creek but I was getting sick of the weather by that point.

Fortunately I was physically fit and had no issues with the portages and had no injuries at all. There is one portage from Side to a No Name which has I would say about an 80 yard cliff which got my heart pumping but I was able to do it three times. A lot of the portages had a ton of mud and I did fall into the mud a couple of times. I had a winter jacket and sleeping bag so I stayed warm.

I made a mistake going from no name to Isabelle and ended up on a lake which was not long and thin. After checking the map I realized I had taken a mud-filled portage to Point and fortunately I didn't have to turn around and redo the bog as there was a portage direct to Isabelle.

There was very little wild life. I saw my token moose swimming on Quetico, a family of muskrats sunning on shore before frantically heading to water and three beavers at once swimming just off my campsite.

I wouldn’t say it was my favorite trip but I saw another area of the park. My big disaster was I lost my camera on day five on Bart. But I found it again on day ten in Agnes. It had fallen out of my breast pocket into my big pack which I never look into because I count the large items that I take out. It was fortuitous that I thought I had put my tent pegs separate from my tent poles and thought they might be in the bottom of the pack and that’s how I found the camera. It was too bad that I didn't get pictures of those five days as I have only been in that part of the park a couple of times before.

Next year I will stay in the north end of the park which is my favorite area.

You can view my pictures at https://photos.app.goo.gl/YZgBDo5fW5xUMVLp7

If anyone is interested in my boring daily audio journal email me at john.larway@gmail.com