Tuesday, July 31, 2007 + After a breakfast of pancakes and sausage we pack our gear into the tow and push off around 7am. The tow drops us off at the portage from Sucker to Birch and at 7:40 am we’re on our own for six glorious days in the BWCA.

We paddle and portage our way through the chain of small lakes that will eventually pour us out onto the western most reach of Knife Lake. The series of paddles and portages … Birch, Carp, Melon and Seed … are an easy warm up and break us in gently for the days ahead. 

Leaving the last portage from Seed into Knife we are finally onto some big, and tremendously blue, water. We paddle past Dorothy’s Isle of Pine and stand in awe of one remarkable person. We reach our first campsite on the east end of Robbins Island where we’ll spend the rest of the day setting up camp, fishing, eating and fishing some more. It’s easy to see that this is a popular campsite…as it shows the wear and tear. We caught and released quite a few smallies, none of great size…except for the two that got away of course.

Tonight we were treated to a beautiful night sky and celebrated our time together, and first night in the BW, with two fine Cuban cigars…but don’t tell anybody.