Tuesday, August 27, 2024 Ahh Good morning! another restful night in the hammock. Another pack up as I exit the hammock in the morning. Though it's not like I'm up at dawn or anything. We're traveling again today so everything needs to be packed up. Which means I need coffee first. Breakfast of french toast with the last of the fresh eggs and then over to the canoe storage area. Once again, on the water by 10 or so. Got a strong North breeze to push us right over to the portage. But getting out of the boat was a tricky. Then finding the trail was more tricky! It went across a granite slab and we had to figure out the piles of rocks were the trail markers. Oh yeah, they're called cairns, I should know that after following them through the Utah desserts. Just didn't expect them up there in the North Woods. Anyway on through Sultry Lake and on to Summer.

On noon we saw the only other travelers that day. Two people fighting the strong head wind going the other way. We told them of the awesome island site on Silence and we went on our way. We made to Shade lake under gathering clouds and threatening skies. We stopped at the first camp site on the east shore south of the portage. The landing was kind of rough but it was a nice site with a huge fireplace. We started decided to stay and set up. Then go out and finally get some fishing in. The campsite had a huge fireplace area and lots of room back in the trees for tents/hammocks. However, further investigation showed there were multitude of widow makers in those woods. Really, we didn't feel safe setting up in there with the wind kicking up real strongly. But the rain was coming and we didn't feel like loading up the canoe to look for another place. We found a couple of hammock safe spots and went ahead and set up the tarp.

By now the fishing was blown out so we went back to the main goal of the trip. Relaxing around camp!. Set up the sleeping arrangements and collected firewood. There was plenty back in the woods. Though we saw plenty campers on Shade Lake across the way it wasn't very crowded. We should have gone a little further on the east shore as the next site looked better. And empty.