Post by fishguts on Jun 30, 2007 18:55:14 GMT -5
Fishguts Incredable Quetico Adventure Part 2
Day 8 July 13 Wednesday
The sun hit the tent at 1st light, so we got up and cooked breakfast. Coffee, coco, bacon (last of the bacon) & peasant eggs….good!! Thomas went right back to bed. Elizabeth and I took the leftovers, in the canoe, over to Carolyn Bay….behind Cedar Point Camp. It was beautiful and quiet. I jigged with a chartreuse twister tail and caught a few Smallmouth Bbotty. It was a pleasant paddle.
We are now back in camp, in the shade, reading and writing.
Thomas is still in bed.
After Thomas got up, he was exploring out by the point and surprised a large deer, drinking in the lake.The deer are twice the size of the deer on the Pacific Coast.
It is a bit cooler today, the wind is from the North. Thomas and I decided to take the canoe and explore Carolyn Bay and the waterfall he spotted over there. The waterfall comes from a lake above McIntyre. We got out of the canoe and climbed up and took a look at it. A fair sized lake! We discussed carrying the canoe over and do some fishing, but decided to check out the rest of this part of McIntyre first.
We fished the shore with little luck……a few small, Smallmouth…..When we got all the way around the last bay we spotted a nice campsite. It looked like a great site, so we got out of the canoe. It has a fire-ring built up against a large bolder.
As we were looking around we noticed a noise….wind or rushing water, on one side of the campsite. Thomas went and checked it out, and there is a 30-foot waterfall just behind the camp. We found out that this is the beginning of the McIntyre River. We hiked down and took pictures and Thomas stuck his head in the falls. It was beautiful, and loud and refreshing!
We paddled back to camp and Elizabeth cooked up a hot lunch of noodles and chicken with 3 cloves of garlic Mmm! After lunch Elizabeth finished our note for the message jar. We sealed it up and hiked back in the woods and placed the jar back in the cairn. Elizabeth then took pictures of Thomas and I by the rock message cairn.
We have solved the ankle biter problem (Biting Flies). The solution is long pants and socks! With the hot weather it’s kinda warm, but better than being chewed on by the ankle biters. None of the bug dope seems to have any effect on them.
Thomas and I have decided to have a light dinner. Elizabeth declined to dine. So we made up ½ a dinner of Lasagna & corn, with chocolate mousse with slivered almonds for desert MMmm! After cleaning up the dishes we went to bed and Elizabeth and Thomas read a chapter each from “3 Men in a Boat”.
Thomas said that there was a frog jumping on the side of the tent, late last night…after bugs? Kept him awake!
Day 9 July 14 Thursday
We woke at sunrise to a chorus from the wolves. There were puppies too! It sounded like they were over by the Rock Cairn.
We made breakfast, eggs with bacon bits and hash brown potatoes. We cleaned up and packed up and were on the water by 8:00 AM. This was a record for us.
There was a light wind from the southeast as we started paddling down McIntyre, towards the portage to Sarah. We pbottyed the “Wall Portage” and took the one about 200 yards further south. Not a bad portage! Then we paddled back and we could see the rocky path that gave the Wall Portage its name. Glad we missed it!
I took a picture of Thomas and Elizabeth in the canoe, on Lake Sarah at the portage, also a picture of a dark red mushroom.
We continued to paddle southeast on Sarah, with the wind in our faces.
We ducked behind a big island to get out of the wind. It took us quite a while to get across Sarah, with the wind, and it is a very large lake.
When we got to the end of Sarah, we again followed Doug Jordan’s advice, and took the “River Route” over to Side Lake. It was very pretty with water lilies and 2 small portages. Then we went down Side Lake to the big portage of the day, 94 rods. Doug told us about this one too. The trail forked after about 200 ft…left or right??? We went left, up what they call “Heart Attack Hill”. We made it in one single portage, with a small rest at the top. We must be getting in good shape! Then we had 2 more ponds with 2 more small portages, and we were in Isabella Lake.
We had planned to stay on Isabella, but we didn’t like the first 2 campsites we saw, then there were 4 guys at the middle campsite, and we couldn’t find the campsite down at the end of the lake…. Just before we had lunch, just as we turned towards the portage, a huge Bald Eagle flew out of a tree near us, and flew right in front of us, and across the lake…Wonderful!
We were pooped…we pulled into the portage at the end of Isabella, and had a lunch break Whew! Thomas checked out the portage, and said it was short, with a beautiful river below.
About this time, the 4 guys who had been at the middle campsite came paddling up to the portage. It made quite a gaggle of us on the portage, we single portaged and they double portaged, so we pbottyed them as they were on the way back.
Now we were on the beautiful Isabella River between Isabella and Bbottywood Lake. There were no more portages, but lots of shallow spots and beaver dams, where we would get out and push through shallows or over beaver dams…. very picturesque! Lots of water lilies are blooming.
We finally made it to Bbottywood. Then we paddled the ½ mile west into “Lost Bay” to a “Clbotty 5” campsite I had heard about. There was almost 2 inches of water in the canoe from all the getting in and out, and we had traveled longer than we had on the entire trip! We think about 12 miles. We were Pooped!
We set up the tent and took a rest. Now we are puttering around camp…Amazing what a little rest and some Advil will do.
This is a beautiful spot on Lost Bay of Bbottywood Lake, and the weather has cooled off. For dinner we had beef stroganoff and peas, and chocolate pudding. This was one of the best Freeze-dried meals we had on the trip! We read “3 Men in a Boat” and took pictures of the sunset. Then off to dream land…
Day 10 July 15 Friday
We slept in this morning. It was overcast, and sprinkled rain on and off, with thunder to the west. We had pancakes and syrup and peasant eggs with herbs and potatoes for breakfast.
It’s looking more like rain…Ooops! Here it comes! … It rained! A light but steady rain. For about 45 minutes (only rain of the trip) we read and snoozed in the tent…very pleasant and cool.
We packed up and headed out for Prairie Portage. Heavy overcast with big lumpy clouds, but no more rain and hardly any breeze. We paddled out of Lost Bay and into “North Bay” of Bbottywood Lake. Bbottywood is very large, and we aimed across the lake for “Bear Island”. This is the name Doug Jordan marked on our map. We missed in our aim and ended up on a peninsula to the east of Bear Island. When we saw some canoes come out over to our right, we soon figured out our mistake, and paddled over to the portage going to Burke Lake.
The first portage of 30 rods put us in another lily pad river, where Elizabeth received another lily flower for her hat. At the end of the river was a 16-rod portage. At this portage was a group of people (6) with 2 canoes….we waited for a while, and then they said that they were a little disorganized, and then moved their canoes apart, and invited us to come through. They seemed a little surprised at how organized we were. We unloaded the packs, as Thomas was lashing in the paddles, I helped Elizabeth on with her pack, Thomas put on a pack and picked up the canoe, and left, Elizabeth right behind him, and I put on the last 2 packs (one back, one front) and we were gone. One trip portaging has become natural for us on this trip. No going back and forth and back again.
We paddled down Burke and checked out where we had camped back 1993, in a heavy wind…not a real campsite, just a spot in out of the wind. We continued down Burke to the large sand beach at the next portage. This Portage leads to Bayley Bay of Bbottywood Lake, and is known as The Yellow Brick Road, because of the yellow sand at both ends.. The entire portage is mostly manicured. Very smooth and easy..84 rods.
Now we are on Bayley Bay..Known for it’s wind, but lucky for us, no wind today. We paddled across towards Prairie Portage. We saw our first motorboat in 10 days, and followed where they went.
We entered Inlet Bay and were looking for a campsite. We had paddled a long way from “Lost Bay” to Inlet Bay, and were running out of gas…. The first site we stopped at, Doug Jordan had marked “Eagle” on the map, and sure enough, in the big pine tree, right in the middle of this campsite was a Bald Eagle, looking down at us. He didn’t fly off, just waited for
us to inspect the campsite…we did, not very good, no place for
our 4 man tent, so off we went.
There is a large island in Inlet Bay, that has 4 campsites marked on it. So we started checking them out. The first one wasn’t great so we kept going. It got worse. The campsites on the back of the island were terrible…we were pooped out! We ended up paddling all the way around the island, back to the first site we had rejected, and grabbed it. It has a nice view of Inlet Bay, and we can see the canoeists and motorboats going back and forth from Prairie Portage.
Prairie Portage is just around the corner from us. We threw up the tent to dry (it was still wet from this mornings shower).
We had a snack, and lay down on the thermorests, for a rest. It’s 6:30 PM and the sky has mostly cleared, just a few puffy clouds left. We are feeling a lot better. There must be an eagle’s nest on our island, because we hear babies crying in the nest. We just put dinner together, Freeze dried dinner… Boil 3 cups of water, stir, wait 10 minutes. We had Turkey Tetrazzini with peas and spiced apples for desert Mmmm!
We had a beautiful sunset. Thomas was reading “3 Men in a Boat” and I kept popping out to take pictures.
Maple Leaf
Day 11 July 16 Saturday
Mist on the lake when we got up.. Thomas slept in for a while longer.. We had tea and coffee, then hash brown potatoes and eggs with red and green bell peppers..After breakfast we leisurely cleaned up. I did the dishes at the lakeside and scrubbed the pots and pans with SOS pads, so that they are ready to turn in to the outfitter. We also went thru the left over food items to separate out the stuff we wanted to take home.
Before breakfast I fished from shore and a 16-inch Northern Pike followed my lure right up to shore…but didn’t bite. He just looked at me and swam off!
We packed up and paddled across to Prairie Portage, and portaged across the Sucker Lake side… There was quite a mob on the portage! There were maybe 15 people on the portage, going both ways. At the Sucker Lake side there were about 25 canoes and a whole mob of people. We waited about 15 minutes till one of “Jeep LeTourells” boats showed up. I gave him our name and he said he’d be back in about 20 minutes for us….so here we wait………..
