Saturday, October 17, 2020
Up early. I had planned a lot of meals on this trip, figuring I'd want to keep myself packed with calories, but I found that it was too cold to sit by the grate preparing a meal, and I wasn't really feeling hungry, either. I made sure to keep eating _something_, but again, I either wanted to be in the sleeping bag or actively moving around, paddling and portaging. Lessons for next time.
As a way to keep myself moving, I decided to break camp again and move to another spot on One. The water was glassy still, so I just drifted along and listened. I floated past another campsite and saw a tarp up, but no canoes at the landing, so I wondered if someone had forgotten it (unlikely) or if they were off on a morning trip (maybe). A few seconds later, two black labs came bounding out barking at me, with their owner calling them back. If you're that person happening to read this, Huckleberry was a darn fine looking dog, and sorry they got worked up about my canoe.
I then went up to site #2208 on paddleplanner, rated as having 3 good tent pads and 5 max tent pads. I have no idea what those people were smoking, or if I was completely blind, but there was only one feasible spot for a tent. I did stop to marvel at what apparently was an otter's shellfish buffet, and then cooked my last chicken breast (those individually wrapped ones? pretty darn nice for a trip like this. I had a ziploc bag with a couple of those in there, and they stayed right around freezing the whole trip) and finally, after 3 solos, the Mountain House biscuits and gravy. THAT was a surprisingly good meal; the biscuit chunks retained enough density that it wasn't just a soggy glop. Definitely one of those backpacking meals where you don't feel like you're eating some generic flavored crap rehydrated with boiling water.
And there I was, around 11:30 am, back in the sleeping bag to get feeling back in my toes, and the snow started falling. It was supposed to be 1-3" over the next few hours, and I sat and watched for a while and thought. I like solo trips. I liked the cold-weather trip. But I didn't particularly like a solo cold-weather trip. My fingers were usually too numb to open the bearvault, so I had to use a twig to poke in the catch to turn the lid, and by the time I finished cooking and eating, I wasn't exactly looking forward to doing camp chores.
But the snow was falling, and the lakes were still as flat and glassy as could be, and I didn't know what tomorrow was going to bring... and so I decided to exit early. Paddling through the snow was a !%!@%* winter wonderland -- because there was no wind, let's be honest. Doing that with whitecapped waves would have been far less enjoyable. But I took my time, slow as could be, heading back out towards the EP.  
I hit the EP, and turned the camera around on myself. I regretted the precautionary day 2 where I moved closer to the EP just in case, because a longer day of paddling through that winter wonderland would have been a treasure, but again, caution and conservative paddling was paramount when I was out there alone. That being said, I did feel like someone from Winterfell in Game of Thrones...
Pizza and beer at the Boathouse Brewpub in Ely, and a growler of their Oktoberfest to bring home with me (which I'm finishing off now). I'm looking forward to next year's trips: a family trip, maybe two; another solo in August, probably bushwhacking to Bedford Lake in the Spider Lake PMA; and at least one, maybe two trips with friends who have started to ask "So ... uh, can I come along on a trip sometime?"
Stay safe, enjoy your trips, take good photos and make good memories.