Again, I was up at 7:00 a.m., but was much better than the day before. I woke at 6:00 a.m., took an Aleve and went back to sleep to let it work for an hour.

We had our normal breakfast of oatmeal and hot chocolate and hit the water at 8:45 a.m. We headed to Malberg Lake for a day trip. I know I sound like a broken record, but this was another beautiful river to paddle. The Kawishiwi River has short portages around picturesque rapids and falls.

At the end of our very first portage we ran into a father and son going the other way. I did a double take. I know that guy. “Lee?”

Lee Retzalff and I went to high school together, went to the same college, and now live in the same town. We have other things in common including hunting, building canoes and taking BWCA trips. I run into him occasionally around town, but was surprised to see him on the 17-rod portage out of Polly. Small world. Ran into both Lee and Set-The-Hook un-expectantly on this trip.

The butterflies were out in force on this trip. Migrating? Mating? At any rate, there were lots of them.

We reached Malberg at 10:30 a.m. It only took us an hour and 45 minutes to reach it from Polly and we were traveling slowly in solo canoes. We toured around the lake checking it out. We went up the eastern arm of the lake and I stopped to inspect the first campsite (#1054). It stunk to high heaven!! I quickly returned to my canoe. Something was dead at that site. Turkey vultures were circling and I could hear hundreds of flies buzzing. . I don't know if someone cleaned fish at the site or some poor critter met his end there, but it smelled horrible and I wasn't going to investigate further.

At the end of the eastern arm of the lake are three campsites. All were vacant and appeared not to be used very often. The northern site (#1059) was very poor and should be used only as an emergency site. It looked as if it wasn't used this season.

I didn't get a good look at the site furthest east (#1058). I saw it only from the water and from a bit of a distance. If I had to guess I'd say that it was the best of the three in that part of the lake.

Jim and I stopped for lunch and an extended rest at the southern site (#1057). It was pretty decent though only had two small tent pads. The latrine has a plant growing in it. Guess it's not used much.

We lounged around for a while. Fished from shore but caught nothing. It was another hot and windy day, the hottest and windiest of the trip. There were a few fluffy clouds but none of them held rain. Not a drop of rain on the trip.

We made it back to Polly by 4:30 pm. As we approached our campsite, we could see something on the water. It was a large flock of Canadian geese. Jim counted 30 of them. We tried not to disturb them but they were right out in front of our campsite. They moved on when we got close enough.

Our trip back from Malberg was upstream and into the wind. Yep, all the wind we were having was from the south. I guess that explained the heat.  I took a full submersion dip. That was hard because the water in front of camp was so shallow and rocky. I kept banging my feet on rocks.

Tonight’s supper was Lipton Chicken Noodles and Broccoli side dish with foil pack chicken. Yummy.

Bedtime was 10:00. I took the water and Aleve with me again.