Day 1 started with breakfast at Britton’s, and we uncharacteristically managed not to over-order/over-eat. Walked back to the Canoe On Inn, checked out, and drove to our Moose Lake put-in. Our route was familiar to us from Moose Lake to Carp Lake, as we’d traveled that at the start of last year’s Quetico trip, but after that, almost everything was new to us. We were lucky enough to see several bald eagles, including a pair that posed for us in a tall pine.

It was suggested that we spend our first night on Birch Lake, but we had lunch there, and didn’t want to stop paddling so early in the day. We pressed on to Knife, and checked out the site (#2187) on the east end of Robbins Island. It was bigger than we needed, but it was around 3 pm when we got there, so we claimed it. No views, but nice and clean. At our lunch stop we had found a fancy clothes line; with camp set up, we soon had wet socks hanging on it. Dinner was a spaghetti experiment which we really liked, but will try to dial its weight down a bit. We really appreciate the USFS grills at each campsite; while we seldom have fires the grill surface works well with our cooking gear. Quetico sites frequently require that we move a flat rock or two to make a cooking area compatible with our setup. During last year's trip we discovered that the Big Agnes Copper Spur UL3 we bought used in 2018 had developed seam tape delamination and leaked during heavy rains, so we we were sporting a new tent this year, a Big Agnes Copper Spur UL3 HV.

After dinner we retired to the tent and reviewed the day's route and looked at options for Day 2. We were getting close to some of the summer’s fire damage, and don’t quite know where travel might be blocked, so looked at a couple route options. After developing a route for Day 2, we read a couple stories from Patrick McManus’ “Real Ponies Don’t Go Oink” and called it a night.