Frost overnight! Well, I learned in the overnight that it is apparently mating season for Loons, and apparently my campsite was smack dab in the middle of the breeding grounds! Now, I love the sound of loons as much as anybody, but I can tell you that having 6-8 of them yodeling and doing their "mating" splash all night long is an easy way to get no sleep! However, I am not complaining. I would much rather be kept awake by loons mating in the wilderness than the sounds of humans mating in a hotel room next door!

Woke up, did some camp chores. I had to rehang my hammock because I had the head to low. I also spent some time playing around with my portable portage yoke. It took me a few tries to get it to where I liked it and where I can put it on efficiently.

About mid morning I headed out with a water bottle and some jerky and started paddling. I honestly had no plan where to go, which is the joy of a last minute solo trip. I opted to first head up the "dangerous waters" to the Lake 2 dam. There was a 15-20mph north wind blowing. The Prism had no issues as long as I paddled straight into the winds, but if I let the wind catch the side it was a bit harder to keep her tracking straight. No surprise.. all canoes act that way. I went up the river until I got just south of the campsite near the dam. There is a bit of a current near there, and with the wind coming straight down the tunnel and the fact that the water was a bit low, it was looking like the way downstream was going to give me ample opportunity to hit rocks on the way back. So, because I had nothing to prove, I decided to turn around at the current and paddle back to the main lake.

So next I decided to paddle into Rifle Lake. I got to the portage and was welcomed by a pair of swans who were very curious about the canoe and came over to take a look. I took the portage from Lake 2 into Rifle and holy smokes!!! Talk about a character builder! Most of the portage is nice and wide. It has a number of large and beautiful white pines along the way... but the second half as you get towards Rifle is a doosey! I included a photo below of the final hill/rock portion heading down to Rifle.

After I played around at Rifle for a while I headed back to Lake 2 and decided I wanted to see if I could find the portage that goes from Lake 2 into the Rock Island Lake PMA. So, I went all the way back to the creek that comes out of Rock Island (The other photo attached to this day on the report) I could tell this was going to be a chore as the beavers and blowdown had made this look impassable. But for the fun of it I thought I would give it a try. The old portage is not that difficult to find and I was able to crawl over and under and follow it for about .25 mile before it came to a rock face in front of me...deadfall to the left and a beaver pond to the right. I decided I didn't care that much, so I turned around and headed back to the canoe. I did come across some wolf scat and some older moose scat on the fairly obvious portion of the old portage. Now, it was getting later in the day. I only saw 1 group way in the distance today paddling into Lake 3. That was it! I was pooped, the wind was still stiff, so I decided I was going to head back to camp and read for a while before I went to bed. I checked the forecast on my Zoleo and it said rain at 10am on Friday, so i thought I would turn in early to paddle out before the rain hit the next day.