We had decided the night before to push into Seagull for the last couple days of our trip, so we hit the water early and quickly made our way to the portage into Alpine. I had been describing the "burn area" we would be travelling through to Jaden for a couple days, but he still couldn't believe what Alpine looked like once we got there. He told me he felt like we were on another planet. I tend to agree, the stark difference between Red Rock and Alpine as far as tree cover goes is somewhat astounding. The winds were already fairly strong, as we knew once we reached Seagull it would only be worse, so we passed through Alpine as quickly as possible.

While loading the canoe after portaging from Alpine to Seagull, I realized our fishing net wasn't in the canoe, so I hiked back to Alpine. It wasn't there either. That meant I had left it on the Alpine end of the portage from Red Rock. I am a strict LNT kind of person and an absolute tyrant when it comes to making sure nothing is left at a portage, but this now makes dumb Dad mistake number 3. We decide we can't take the time to undo the portage we just did, paddle back through Alpine twice, and then reportage. So I bid my net farewell, hoping another fishing group will find it and put it to good use. I wasn't happy about that decision at the time at all, and it put me in a pretty bad mood for most of the rest of the morning.

When we arrived on Seagull, the wind was pushing whitecaps to just outside the bay where the portage from Alpine enters. We could see the closest site was empty, but we didn't like that one, so we pushed to the next site (#460) on the long rocky point leading to that bay area which also was empty. We landed, took a look around, and liking what we saw, decided to make this our last site for the trip.

Some notes about this camp- its is huge, has a lot of open space, has great rocks for sunning or for jumping into the lake, probably has great shore fishing, and has a toilet area that must vie for the title of longest bathroom walk in the BW. It is literally 1/4 mile away up the rocky point, which was a bit of a surprise the first time we went looking for it.

We set up camp and then headed out to fish for a bit, but were confined to the small bay near our camp as the whitecaps everywhere else made trolling, jigging, or drifting impossible. After about an hour, a group of 2 canoes approached our site while we were on the opposite side of the bay. They landed at our canoe landing, went ashore and had a lengthy look around. When they didn't leave upon seeing our gear, I got a bit concerned and we paddled back to camp to see what they were doing. They were a very nice group, 2 couples in their 20's, and they just wanted to place to eat lunch. I wasn't a huge fan of the fact that they didn't leave right away when they found our tent/gear, but we told them to go ahead and do so, and we went back out fishing. After about an hour, we came back to the site. They had been there the whole time, making lunch, taking a few casts, and just relaxing. We were tired though, so we came into the canoe landing and talked with them for a while. We asked how their fishing was going (slow, like ours), how they were dealing with the wind (they had cut their trip route down significantly because of it), and where they were headed (further into Seagull for another night). I told them our experiences as well, and mentioned leaving my net at the Red Rock-Alpine portage. One guy almost laughed, and asked me to describe the net. He smiled, walked over to his canoe, and pulled out MY NET! He gave it back without delay and then joked about how lucky it was that they came to our site to have lunch. He was right. And to think that an hour earlier I almost asked these people to leave because I didn't like them at our site. I'm glad I didn't judge too harshly and that karma took over from there. I don't know who they are or remember where they are from, but they sure changed the vibe of that entire day for my son and I.

After eating lunch we did some cliff jumping from the rocks around camp, fished a little from shore, and lounged in the sun. It was a beautiful but windy afternoon, with rain forecast overnight. More wind was in store for Friday, and then a repeat of both the rain and the wind for Fri night/Sat AM. Jaden and I talked it through, and we made the hard decision to pack up the next morning and leave a day earlier than planned. That decision was like a huge weight lifted off my son's shoulders. He seemed to have not enjoyed the last couple days as much as I expected, but after he knew we would be leaving a bit early, he was about as energetic, cheerful, and talkative as could be. Another victory for Dad to help offset my not so good moments of the week!