Day 15

4 lakes, 3 portages

We were up at 7 again, to a sunny and clear morning with a misty lake and a temperature of 39. As we were cooking our breakfast on the stove and eating in the fire grate area, a moose was nearby browsing in the water just offshore across from our campsite (on the little stream to the portage rapids.) At coffee time she came down closer to us and stayed awhile, with her reflection in the water making an exciting time for me with the camera. If she was the one with the calves she didn't have them in sight. We have always called her "the moose who came to breakfast".

A duck and five ducklings came by also, and made a big splash when they saw us.

We broke camp and were on the water at 9:15. Saw a large moose near the portage out of Weird Lake and photographed her also--the closest we have been to one yet! This should be called "Moose Lake" or "Moose Village"!!

We had seen a deer near this spot yesterday en route to the Vern River, but she isn't around today.

The 80-rod portage from Weird goes into an unnamed pond, and is closely followed by our longest portage of the trip, 240 rods to South Temperance Lake. It is level and easy, with lots of down wood at the beginning and not much chance to see the Temperance River, although you can hear it at times.

South Temperance Lake has a rockier shore, tall pines, and is deeper than those of the past couple days. It is very pretty.

The 53-rod portage to North Temperance Lake has a pond-like area in the middle, where you walk along a rocky ledge to go by. The pond has a grassy area in the middle and more dead trees again. I thought this was a particularly scenic and enjoyable portage. I liked walking along the ledge and looking down at the pond below.

We looked first at the island campsite in the northernmost end of North Temperance, but it was occupied. Went back and took the second from the north site. It is up on the shore and very sheltered. The fireplace area and hillside has pine trees,

but further back in where the tent is located we had a grove of large birch trees and a clearing with sunshine. In spite of bugs in such a protected location, it was really lovely.

The weather was bright and breezy, so we washed up, in spite of inconvenient water access. [Yes, back in those days we washed by the lakeshore with Ivory soap. We later learned to carry a pot of water out into the woods and do our washing up away from the lake shore.]

Neil managed to find a decent sitting rock a ways down the shore for relaxing in the evening. We saw two canoes come by looking for a site. They stopped and spoke with people in two other canoes who appeared to be heading back to the northern site after fishing. Still later a young couple came by looking to camp and the woman was quite vocally disappointed to find our site taken. [The weather was nice, and we didn't really feel a need to offer to share, but I did hope that they found something eventually.]

We were in the tent about 9 PM, hoping for a quiet day with no wind for our foray into the big lake, Brule, in the morning.