Little did I know when I woke up this day, that at the end of it I would have been out paddling and portaging for nearly 15 hours. Yikes.

We got up with the sun at 5:30, skipped breakfast other than a couple cliff bars and were on the move by 7. The lake was calm but the breeze was picking up quick, no doubt Tuscarora doesn't seem to stay sleepy for long. Our path was still up in the air, perhaps we'd just go to Crooked and then head north to Gillis and stay there, but we were still itching to get to Little Sag; let's just see how the morning goes and then decide. It didn't take long at all to reach Crooked so our minds were set, we will still make this trip to Little Sag, even if we're a day behind. Paddling and portaging went well, I mistakenly pointed us to the south on Mora, heading to the wrong portage, but we figured things out and made it back on track to the 45 rod to Little Sag. I won't lie though, it was a small hit to my confidence, I don't like feeling turned around. Following the Superior Trail like we have so many times past is far easier than navigating these lakes and finding portages.

We came up Little Sag and were careful to make sure we were recognizing landmarks and campsites, and made it to the overlook campsite after that first bay on the northeast side. We felt good, we knew exactly where we were and confidence was restored. The lake was still pretty calm and looked great, with only one other canoe spotted as far as we could see. We ate our late breakfast/lunch of bagels and breakfast sausage and lied on the warm rocks for a while to soak up some sun. Great views of the lake up here, but pretty exposed to the wind and not much depth to the site other than a nice vista rock up by the latrine. Also clearly in the burn area so not much for mature trees. I'm not sure I'd want to make this our camp for the night, and it was still around noon so no reason not to keep moving.

Our new plan was to follow the northeast shore up to the portage for Virgin lake and head that way, settling on whichever campsite looked good on the chain of three lakes over there: Virgin, West Fern, or Powell. Following the shore however proved quite challenging. The islands that look so tiny on the map were larger than expected, and we found ourselves really struggling to tell if we were still along the shore, or instead along an island. We knew we were still on the northeast side of the lake, but I was having a hard time figuring out where exactly. We went into what I think was the bay just west of the portage, stopped to try and figure out where we were, and eventually decided to go further west rather than east. A maze of more small islands eventually got us to a portage but we could tell by the look of things it was more likely to Rattle lake rather than Virgin. No worries I thought, this was the original goal route for us anyway so let's do it. We're making good time, lots of day left and gorgeous weather, no reason to look back now.

We went to Rattle, and spent a bit of time searching for the portage, once again lowering my confidence. The map showed the red dots to the west of the small hill along the river to Gabbimichigami, we went up and down the shore twice finding nothing and eventually decided to check out the river where we could hear rapids, and sure enough it was right by the river. "Follow the water sound" was what we came away with there. Seems most portages are close to the streams connecting lakes than is sometimes indicated on the map. We got to Gabbi lake and wow, what a gorgeous area. We were checking off the campsites as we paddled, keeping good track of our location while soaking in the solitude and beauty of this lake. No campsites occupied, the eastern site of the pair mid lake was park like with mature trees and wide open space. We'll definitely get back here some day. But getting from Gabbi to Round on our last day seemed like a long one, so we continued to move on, figuring we'd settle into a site on Peter.

Peter was a nice long lake, but a little ominous feeling. It looked like the fire had burned especially hot here, Ham Lake fire we figured but found it after the trip to be the Cavity Lake fire. No mature trees left, and almost no tall dead ones even as we'd seen in the Ham Lake burn area. Which led to another lesson, don't bring a hammock to camp in a burn area. We checked out site after site to find no tall trees, a few scrubby jack pines that could maybe keep K off the ground, but no way supporting my weight would be good for them. This was likely 4ish in the afternoon by now, but all we could do was move on, searching for a site with some trees. We went to French, the portage was packed with new growth shoving the canoe from side to side as we portaged, and we checked out the north site, again no mature trees. Things looked better looking south, but we were heading east overall and didn't want to add distance at this point so we thought, surely if we could just get to Gillis, there's so many sites there, that would be the end of our day.

We came out on Gillis and could immediately see people at the nearby sites and multiple boats on the water. This was a party lake, packed with people on a Friday night. We decided on heading south to check the other sites there first, all occupied. As we inspected, that same crew of three boats from Tusc were heading east. We followed behind to watch them occupy the last sight on Gillis, it was tough to see, surely they couldn't have been out for as long as we had been, we were tired and needed to be done, but first come first serve, what can you do? Three sites left on Bat, a smaller lake and I'd hope less popular, we'll head that way. Likely around 5 o'clock by now.

We encountered a solo traveler at the portage to Bat, he had driven up from Milwaukee that morning and gone through Brant. We were impressed to see him at Gillis. He said it looked like all the sites on Bat were occupied, maybe a site left on Brant but another group was putting in as he had headed out and they mentioned the intention to not go out far on their first night. Not great news for us, we told him it looked full on Gillis too, head for French. But all we could do press on, plenty of light left this time of year we thought, the idea was already coming to mind that we may just go all the way out to our truck waiting on Round lake. It would be 8 portages yet to make that happen, but the lakes were mostly small, maybe it could be done if we had to.

As expected, all occupied on Bat, we barely bothered to slow while checking them, continued on as we must with still a shred of hope for Brant. We went on to Green, uneventful, then Flying, a swampy little lake. We encountered two boats here, they seemed a little disgruntled that they had not found a site yet, looked like they were headed to the north to try and find something. Then the portage to Gotter and things got a bit rough. We hit a Y in the path, K went up ahead to the right and it didn't look right, so we went left. There was clearly a trail on the ground, but the brush and trees told a different story. Before long both my shins were scraped and bleeding from all the brush and trees, and finally it got so thick I lodged the canoe between two trees and got completely stuck. I dropped the boat which smacked right into my beat up legs and I was unable to even move through the brush to get it off me. Totally stuck. K gave me a hand and pulled the boat off me, then went a hair down the trail. Looks like a way to get to some water but we're on the wrong side of it from where the map showed we should be, just got to push through. I took a look, I felt very unsure. Where are we? Had we gone to a different small lake? This was low land and the sun was behind the trees, the time crunch was on and it was stressing me out. I knew we could set up camp anywhere if we had to, but I also wanted to double back and get to a point where I knew for sure where we were. K was sure this must be Gotter, lets just get in the water and to the end, if the portage is where it's supposed to be, it should be right. I was hesitant, but the shape of the lake seemed to match, and the portage was heading in the right direction according to the compass, so we pressed on. I told K, "there's a site right at the beginning of Brant, I just need to see some people and I'll feel better." A while back I had read "Lost in the Wild," two stories of folks that had gotten good and lost in this same forest, one in the BWCA and one on the Pow Wow trail; they both survived but their stories were rough and nearly deadly, and those stories were coming into my mind at this point. The psychological battle with myself was on, and it wasn't going well due to my exhaustion and dehydration at this point.

But! We came out on Brant, there were the occupied sites, we were found again, and that felt good. We weren't hopeful for a site, but at least we were sure where we were again. We passed all the full sites, very careful to be keeping a look on the compass as we went along, even passed a group camping on the island because they had the same problem as us: lots of travel to find no open sites. We had 3 portages to go to just finish this thing up, lets just get to the truck and call it. If we could just get to Round, I'd have no problem paddling that in the dark.

We made it to the east side of Brant, went up and down the shore a little, and just weren't finding the portage. I looked back to the west, the sun was well below the tree line now. "We're done," I said. We backtracked a little to a large open boulder and climbed up it, this will have to do. It was 9pm, we'd been out for 14.5 hours. K was a poet with the tarp and managed a low shelter with what scrub trees and stumps there were, about 3 feet off the ground. I got some water filtered and started the ramen. It took a while for the adrenaline to wind down, a couple cups of wine helped with that. The mosquitos were thick as smoke, but the temp dropped fast and out of no where, poof! They were gone. Very thankful for that. We climbed into our bags after dinner to sleep on our boulder. I slept like a dream! Only woke up once to hear the beavers slapping the water down below. K said maybe she got 45 minutes of sleep all night, I was way too exhausted for that.

~Tuscarora Lake, Owl Lake, Crooked Lake, Tarry Lake, Mora Lake, Little Saganaga Lake, Rattle Lake, Gabimichigami Lake, Peter Lake, French Lake, Gillis Lake, Bat Lake, Green Lake, Flying Lake, Gotter Lake, Brant Lake