Friday, June 15, 2018 We took our time packing up and hitting the water in the morning today. We pulled out from our campsite around 10 am and headed west. Rather than taking the Bottle Portage into Iron, we used the longer, 240 rod portage past the beaver pond on the west end of Iron Lake, which dumps out into Lac la Croix right next to the Ranger Cabin. I was hoping to see a moose at the beaver pond between Iron and LLC, but as we got to the pond, we saw another group leaving the pond in front of us so the chance at seeing wildlife was gone. On a previous trip with just my wife and I, we had the pleasure of a cow and two calfs wading in the beaver pond. When we got to the Ranger Station, there was a group of four that was heading the same direction as us and planning to camp on Agnes. I was starting to get nervous that maybe we wouldn't find a sight on Agnes, if it was anything like Iron. We headed down the Boulder River and the 115 rod portage into Agnes. This is a beautiful portage, especially on the Agnes end, worth a photo or two. As soon as we got to Agnes, we saw lots of canoes, and as we paddled south out of the NW bay, all of the sites to our right were occupied, but the lone site in the NE corner of the lake was vacant so we jumped on it.  Most of the other sites on the lake appeared to be occupied, so we considered ourselves lucky. We'd find out later that this site was probably vacant for a good reason. I'd consider this site a 4 star, it's got kind of a crappy landing, but the kitchen, tent pads, view, and fishing potential were all great. At first, we just stopped here to eat lunch and decide if we should paddle out today as rain was in the forecast. Joe and Tristan seemed to be leaning towards coming out a day early. However, after seeing the great site and the weather holding off for the time being, we decided to stay the night. Douglas was elated. If it were up to him, we'd move sites everyday. I like that tripping style too, maybe he and I will cover some serious ground in the future.... Voyageurs Challenge perhaps? I've wanted to do it solo for a while now, but haven't been able to make it work, but maybe in a 4 or 5 years Doug and I could do it. Anyway, we explored camp, fished a little with no luck, lounged around and ate some mac and cheese for dinner.  It was a very relaxing, rain free evening.  As we packed up for the night, I took a look in the food pack and saw that we packed perfectly. There was enough oatmeal and coffee for the morning and one emergency rice pack in the food pack, that was it. I've always been in the Cliff Jacobson line of thought about food packs, seal everything up tight, stash it back in the woods, far , far from camp. I've never had an issue.  On this night I got lazy, and I stashed the food pack down by the lake about 100 feet from the kitchen with a rock on top. At 2 am, I heard the bear knock the rock off the pack and I shot up out of my bag and grabbed my headlamp, but not my GoPro. LOL. I nudged my dad who was super slow to wake up, I told him a bear was getting at the food pack and I was getting out to scare it away. I told him to get his pistol (which was in a pack by the kitchen) and meet me out there. I came out just in time to see the bear trying to pry the top off of my Quetico Superior Hard sided food pack. He/she quickly dropped the pack when I hit it with the light, but I had to yell at it to get it to run off, which it did shortly after. After it departed, my dad comes walking up with the pistol and almost steps in a huge pile of bear scat, right next to our kitchen. The bear roughed up my pack a little and chewed a whole in Doug's nalgene bottle, but didn't get any food.  I stayed up for an hour or two after this incident, built a fire, moved the food pack and hung out until I got tired. The bear never returned.  Now, I'll be the first to admit that I didn't stash the food far enough away from camp, but I don't think it would have mattered. This bear was clearly habituated to this campsite and we learned later that there had been several bear encounters on this site in the last month and most cases resulted in the bear getting food.  Trouble. Agnes has always had bear issues, so I should have been more vigilant, but I got lazy on our last night and there was very little food left.  Oh well, it provided some excitement on our last night.