Tuesday, August 04, 2026 Day 4: After the storm passed I slept like a rock. I woke up to wind. A lot of wind. That long narrow beautiful flat lake, Crystal Lake had turned into something more than I wanted to experience with my canoe skill level. On that day I truly don't think I could have left even if I had to. I kind of hung out around camp windblown and stir crazy. I wanted to do a loop on this trip and now I was on my 2nd day of base camping. Not what I had expected or wanted to do the homesickness came back and thoughts about what the heck am I doing here came into play.
By the end of the day I had come to the conclusion that the boundary waters is just to dang beautiful for 1 person. I had 3 days left on my trip and I wanted to go home.
The wind started to die down a bit and I chose to head out to the middle of the lake to get some water for the evening. Me trying my best to stay dry ended up very wet with a few inches of water in my canoe. Another lesson learned always wet foot. After draining the canoe and swallowing my pride I headed back out soaking wet; but I came back with the water for the evening. Later in the evening I got a weather report from the loved ones on the Garmin in reach. "Weather tomorrow calm". "Weather following day more wind but stronger then today".
I made the decision to head out the following morning if the water was calm. I've read a lot on the bwca.com forums one thread that I've read many times is the thread "solo thoughts". There is one comment on there that mentions paddling hard.
That's all I could think about. "If this water stays flat, I'm paddling as hard as I can tomorrow". I finished up camp chores packed my bags and headed to bed very early with the intent of going home the following day.
~Crystal Lake, Spaulding Lake