Sunday, December 20, 2026 We all arrived in Duluth the day before, the East Coast guys coming in by commercial flights and the road warrior uncle driving up from Nebraska to meet us. After a night in a bunkhouse at Voyageurs Canoe Outfitters we had a hearty breakfast, got squared away with all our gear and were driven to our entry point. We were on the water by 10:30 a.m. and enjoyed a brisk tailwind as we paddled east along the south arm of East Bearskin. We saw several people paddling against the wind and they were certainly struggling. The 49-rod portage into Alder was very easy and my 29-year old nephew did yeoman work carrying two Granite Gear Duluth packs at a time on all portages. As the senior member of the crew, I did my best to keep up. The westerly winds were even stronger as we paddled along Alder looking for an open campsite. Our outfitter had told us that this year is unusually busy as people are making up for trips lost during the recent closure, and we were unable to find an open site that we liked on this lake. There were some hairy moments as we turned into the wind during our search, but we managed to keep the canoes right side up. After another easy 22-rod portage into Canoe Lake we saw that site 701 was open and after a quick paddle across we pulled into the very easy landing and set up camp on this spacious site. As is always the case, we had some trouble finding a tree from which to hang our food bag, but we found one in the end. My nephew tried some fishing from the shore before dinner with little luck. After nightfall we enjoyed some amazing stargazing before retiring for the night. ~East Bearskin Lake, Alder Lake, Canoe Lake