I'm awake at 4:50 but the hammock is so comfortable I lay there until 5:30. I make oatmeal and top it with raw honey and dehydrated apple slices. It then takes me a while to tear down and fill the packs. Doing one trip a year I'm not in sync yet as to what goes where.

We paddle north and it's sunny with a light breeze. We take the 20 rod portage into Little Crab then follow a narrow creek up into Korb Lake without any trouble. We get on the Korb river to our west and this is very scenic all throughout before hitting a 35 rod portage leading to Cummings Lake.

I'm on the trail first and soon come upon a large blowdown at an angle across the trail. This looks very fresh and there's branches out of the trunk making it impossible to cross over. I get out the saw and go to work. About 20 minutes later there's a nice path to portage through. I'm really liking my new saw.

We meet a couple of older guys out on a daytrip. At the rocky landing into Cummings the wind has picked up and is blowing straight down the lake at us. The 2 guys are older locals and, with no real gear except daypacks they shove off into the waves. Me and Bob are not so sure about it.

We talked about going back and entering Cummings from a different portage to the west but retracing our steps and adding more work is something we both hate to do. So, we went for it. Bob steadied my boat as I loaded up off the boulders while waves wanted to push the canoe back into the rocks. I managed fine once off the shore and just needed to keep myself pointed into the wind.

I watched from 15 yards out as Bob tried the maneuver by himself. Once in the boat he suddenly jumped out into waist deep water. Uh oh... Jake managed to stay put but some water came over the side when it tipped. He unloaded and dumped the canoe out then tried again at a different section of shore. All is good now and we are both off into the white caps.

We need to paddle about 1 and mile up a wide arm of Cummings into the white caps before finding a campsite. We stuck to the north shore and really exerted ourselves as we made slow progress against the waves. We round the corner and can see that the nice island spot is already taken. There's another site up ahead on our shore. It's open!

The landing is perfect, a large flat slab of granite with a shallow sandy approach. I'm liking this already. We find a nice fireplace surrounded by sitting logs and even large flat rocks to do food prep. The site is very flat and open behind the pit with camp spots back behind and off to the side in the trees.

My Warbonnet Blackbird hammock with a Warbonnet Superfly tarp. I found a nice protected area to the side of the site.

Luna's little tent gets set up beneath my feet. I put down a foam mat with a fleece blanket on top of it for her. She really likes it in there.

After setting up camp I throw the tennis ball into the water for Luna. She loves this and I have to physically tell her when we are done because she just won't quit no matter how cold and shaking she gets.

Bob took this of me by the lake.

We were going to layover again so wanted to stock up on cut firewood which we did. Bob discovered a path that went way back beyond the site and checking my Voyageur map it shows a system of ski trails coming from lakes to the east.

We got the fishing rods rigged up and Bob fished offshore. I threw the ball in the water AGAIN for Luna. She apparently had a lot of pent up energy from laying in the canoe while I fought the white caps so I obliged her. Then, it was time for a nap!

My dinner was dehydrated elk burger with Hamburger Helper (stroganoff). I did a lot of dehydrating of food for this trip and have 4 meals like this planned. I also dried some ham to add to Mac and Cheese. That is one of my favorite canoe camping meals. This evening we are treated to a spectacular sunset. Photo courtesy of Bob.