Day 4 I woke up with plenty of rest, but my dad, on the other hand, did not sleep well. We put on our drenched clothes and set sail for the portage. On our way we met up with Russ and talked with him. There was a morning mist all morning. We got to the portage and fished at the bottom of Saganaga Falls with no success. On the next lake I trolled for anything that would bite. Nothing bit. We fished at the bottom of that rapids where a pike struck and missed my hooks. This was where I caught my personal best smallmouth bass last year. As we started the portage I found Russ’ flashlight. When we caught up to him later, I returned it to him. This was my dad’s favorite portage of the trip.

We crossed Maraboeuf to the portage into the Granite River. Nothing interesting happened there, but I really like the scenery in that area, because of all the rapids. On Clove Lake, we decided to take a long break to dry everything out and eat lunch. We saw a canoe with 2 people stop to talk with Russ. We assumed it was Beav and Kendra. We quickly wrapped up what we were doing and tried to catch them, because I really wanted to paddle with them. We caught up to them surprisingly quickly and met them at Little Rock Falls where Beav told us about the burning bush. We took some pictures and continued on.

When we got to Magnetic Lake, I called my Grandma. We dropped Russ here and paddled with Beav and Kendra all the way across Gunflint. Once we were across Gunflint, we stopped for a break and they kept going. We also called my mom and had a great conversation about how good the DQ is going to taste at the end of the trip.

We got out our fishing gear from the bags and decided to fish our way across Little Gunflint. It looked so pikey, but there were no bites. Instead of the portage, we decided to paddle up the rapids as far as we could and then drag the canoe over the beaver dam, and in doing so, I lost my glove. On Little North lake, we fished some more and caught nothing. When we got on to North Lake I had the idea to switch lures to a deep diving rapala in hope for a lake trout. Spoiler, we caught nothing. We conquered the Height of Land Portage and I got sprinkled with a balsam branch, and recited what little of the Voyageurs pledge we could remember, just the part about the promise to never kiss another voyageur's wife.

Again Russ caught up with us and he gave me back the same glove I lost 3 lakes ago! I can’t believe he found my glove! We kept paddling through South Lake admiring the Rose Lake Cliffs beauty as the sun set. We got on Rat Lake as the sun went down so we started to look for a campsite. There was an okay campsite on the portage from Rat to Rose, so we set up camp there.

I put our campsite reflector on a tree and it worked a little too well! Russ came paddling over through the night and asked to camp with us which we were more than happy to welcome him. He got the second best tent pad which was still bad. He let us use his stove for our second and last warm meal of the trip. We made three packs of instant rice and it was great! There were pesky mice at most of our sites, but at this site, there were about 10,000 mice trying to eat our food! Then another person, Matt, stopped in to camp with us. I don’t know how he slept because he had the worst tent pad of all time! We all talked for a while before going to bed. Our campsite was next to a noisy waterfall and there were mice everywhere so I gave it 2.5 stars. 37.5 miles.