Thursday, July 01, 2021 - We wake up to a cool breeze and clear skies. It seems a little cooler than the past couple of days. We are on the water and paddling at 8:50 AM. Our plan is to paddle down toward Tiger Bay looking for a nice campsite. With the long day yesterday, we can afford to take a day off from paddling, so we need to find a good campsite for the down day. We are still paddling in Lac La Croix, but working our way past some islands that separate us from the wider, more open part of the lake.
We pass a large group (5 canoes) headed in the opposite direction. James is following the map and we turn east still paddling past a series of islands. We pass a nice campsite on an island and then turn south. A bald eagle in a tree watches us paddle by.
The eastern shore is Canada where there are reportedly pictographs on rock cliffs. We paddle over and eventually locate the pictographs and take pictures. It’s getting close to lunch time and we paddle back across to the U.S. side to check out a campsite. It is a premium site with a sheltered sand beach for landing canoes. There is plenty of room for tents and it has a nice fire pit with an adjacent table constructed from logs and rocks. On the other side of the point is a rocky beach for swimming. This will be our home for the next day and a half (Campsite 171).
After lunch, I take one of the canoes out to fish. Our camp is on an island and I’m able to slowly work my way around the island and back to camp. I haven’t caught any fish. The others are in various modes of napping, swimming, or generally relaxing. I head over to the swim beach and get cooled off.
James & I take the canoe back out about 5 PM to try the fish again. I finally start catching bass on a brown Mepps spinner. I land two and let two get away. James converts to a white Mepps spinner, but apparently brown is the color of choice today. Back to camp and it’s time to clean fish and cook dinner. Monique watches while I filet the fish. Kathy says she can’t bear to watch. We get the oil heating up and the fish breaded and fry fish nuggets for dinner along with some cheesy mashed potatoes.
After dinner, we stumble through our nightly food hanging routine. As with the previous campsites, trees with optimal branches for hanging are not available. We settle on some dead branches hoping they will hold. Some do, but then CRACK – one comes down and we have to start over. It’s getting darker so it’s a race to hang the food before the mosquitoes make food out of us. We “Get Er Done” just in time.