It rained all night. In the morning it did stop long enough to eat breakfast and break camp. We were paddling by 9:30, and the rain started again. Sometimes it rained very hard. At one point I couldn’t wait to reach a portage to empty my canoe. It had so much water in it it was hard to control. Larry tried bailing Becca but said the water was coming in as fast as he could bail.

So those were the conditions as we traveled up the Dahlgren River to the Boulder River to Lake Agnes. The rain lessened but the wind picked up when we reached Agnes. The plan was to take a lunch break at Agnes before pushing on to Nina Moose Lake. We stopped at 2:00 p.m. at a nice campsite (#1803). We were all wet, and tired, and taking a chill. In addition, the wind really picked up and created rollers on the lake. The wind made the decision for us. This would be our campsite for the night. 

Our campsite on Stuart had multiple resident mice (I hate them), but this site had a pet chipmunk that Steve named Aggie (after Lake Agnes). He was a friendly little guy, though we had to keep shooing him away. He even visited Larry and Jim inside the Lean-Two.

Of course everything was wet and we spent a lot of time trying to stay warm, dry, and out of the wind. Right at dusk we saw a critter near the shoreline apparently digging for turtle eggs. All four of us instantly recognized it as a badger. That was a first for me and I believe for the others as well. None of us had seen a badger in the BWCA before. I wondered if the Bucky Burger at the Ely Steakhouse was a foreshadowing of this moment. Well, I got to add a new critter to my BWCA animal sighted list. I never would have guessed that I would have seen a badger and a cougar (from 2000) before seeing a wolf or a bear in the BWCA. BTW – I tried getting a picture of the badger but they didn’t come out.

We had Jim’s chili for supper with his wife’s famous corn muffins. Jim’s chili and Steve’s buckwheat pancakes have become traditions for the Four Solo Trip. They are good traditions.

There was no fire that night. All the wood was soaked and the wind howling, so we deemed it not worth the hassle of getting a fire going. Besides, with the corn muffins for supper we decide to forego the reflector oven biscuits.