I woke up early this morning as the wife slept in. It was a nice cool morning and the weather was perfect. Not long before I had gotten up we were visited by two gals from the US Forest Service. They checked the latrine, permits, site etc then asked me about my food situation and how I was protecting it from bears.

I told them that my first trip into the bwca was when I was 14 years old and with Cliff Jacobson as the leader of the kids. We learned then to mask scent and move food away from camp. That's the way I have done it my whole life. I have never run a bear rope and hung food.

She went on to say they were having issues on the gunflint and may be requiring bear barrels or hanging next year. Maybe she's full of it but to me, that is overstepping the boundaries of our rights to survive as we see fit. My rant. Sorry.

When done with our business, I informed them that I had heard hatchet chopping coming from a site nearby the night before followed by literally enough smoke to fill the void between us. Obviously green wood. I was glad that they had showed up because I wasn't really looking forward to making that visit myself although I would have.      

So this morning was beautiful with hardly any wind and before we had headed up north, the weather report had said rain for this day. I decided that today was the best day weather wise to leave and that the predicted bad weather might be a day late. Man was I right. We stayed in a hotel in Duluth on this night and saw the storms up north. 

At the top of the list of items to buy, a weather radio.

We had a calm absolutely beautiful paddle out and along the way my wife said the following. "Dave, thank you for bringing me here, I never understood why you were so talkative about this place until I saw it. Now I understand and I want to come back."

F*** Yeah right?