Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Awoke to winds out of the South and West today, skies were overcast but not threatening. Breakfast consisted of coffee, oatmeal, and scrambled eggs. Once the dishes were done and camp struck, we loaded up the canoe and bid farewell to our first camp.
Hit the water at 11, hoping to make it around Thunder Point today.
Very windy on the lakes. No whitecaps but still choppy. Portage into Eddy Lake was uneventful.
Paddled across Eddy to the portage to Knife. I knew this was a busy portage because of the falls, but didn’t expect to see 5 canoes and about 15 people. When we got close they told us to hold off as there were 3 more boats coming up the portage…. The larger of the groups turns out to be a Scout group and they’re having lunch at the portage! After hanging out offshore for what seems like an eternity one of the smaller groups realizes we’re patiently waiting (although frustration is mounting) and clears out so we can land.
Done portaging we head over to the landing to check out Eddy Falls.
Some of the Scouts we saw climbing around Eddy Falls decided to swamp their boat when they were just offshore from camp –
After sight seeing a bit and a snack of granola, jerky, and gorp we turn West and head towards Thunder Point. Wind is pretty stiff in our faces and makes progress slow. After a couple hours of this the sounds from my companions tell me we won’t make it past Thunder Point today and we should find camp soon…
We end up landing on the island site SE of Thunder Point, camp #1454. Its a decent sized island with one site, looks like it was involved in the fire last year but parts were spared the flames. As we’re putting up the tarp a couple drops of rain fall, these will turn out to be the only rain we see this week.
Its so windy at this campsite we have to run extra lines from the tent to keep it from collapsing in on itself. Once the tent is secured and everyone’s had a snack we check out the island.
We paddle around a bit, do some fishing. We drift around the South Arm letting the wind push us as we fill the water container. Once back at camp Ken tries fishing the channel between the island and main land and ends up with a smallie.
None of us have filleted before so I give it a go. I’m sure I left a lot of meat on the fish, and my first attempt ends up giving us enough meat for an appetizer.
Had planned on making jambalaya for dinner anyhow, so once we’ve had our couple bites of fish we put the Zatarains on and mix in some pepperoni.
After we’re all stuffed and the dishes are done we hang out around the campfire enjoying the calls of the loons and the absolute darkness of the cloudy night. At least the winds have died down a bit…..
~4 miles traveled today. Saw more loons.