Thursday, July 27, 2006

Kawishiwi River to Lake Polly

We were still a little on edge in the morning, but the sleep had knocked some sense back into us and we weren't imaging the worst. We ate breakfast and packed up camp before setting off toward Malberg. The goal today was to head back to Polly, where we spent the first night of our trip. Getting to the portage into Malberg was a little tricky as it was shallow and strewn with rocks, but we got to see a deer take off after seeing us. The portage was easy, rising slightly, then falling into Malberg Lake. As we paddled, we looked toward the sites to see if there was group around but we didn't see anyone. All the sites were open and we were still hoping to figure out what had happened the night before. Our first clue of a couple possibilities came when we paddled up on a group of about 8 loud guys skinny-dipping in the lake, who told us there was another camp of girls with them across the lake. They could have make the racket we heard. Our next clue came after we got to the end of the portage out of Koma Lake south to the Kawishiwi River. There we came across a large group with a bunch of little kids. They had been staying on Malberg the previous night, and they would stay near us on Polly this night. After listening to the kids screaming that night on Polly, we thought this was probably the screaming we heard that scared the s$%^ out of us. You could tell we were getting closer to the popular Kawishiwi Lake entry point as we saw lots of groups while we traveled back to Polly. One father who was on a day trip with his son and was camping on Polly, warned us that Polly was very crowded and we might not find a site. He also remarked "I'm surprised they don't have telephone booths on that lake." After crossing the short portages leading back to Polly, we headed toward the closest campsite and Polly and found it open. We were even more surprised to see how nice it was after getting to it. It had three different areas to accommodate tents, each with nice pads, and the site was spread out nicely. We had covered a decent amount of ground quickly, so we had the afternoon to relax. While eating dinner, we started talking about how we had another easy day ahead of us as we planned to stay on Square Lake the next night to complete our ten nights in the wilderness. We finally decided to just head out, knowing that when we got to Square, we would not want to set-up camp and take it down again when we were only a couple miles from our exit. We were all ok with this. While it cut a night off our trip, we thought we had done the best we could to plan our route on the fly. After dinner, we got everything ready to go for the next day and played a last few games of Uno. We slept well, despite the loud kids nearby.