Today was takeout day, which is always a day of mixed emotions for me. While I’m always looking forward to a big bacon cheeseburger and a good shower, there is always a part of me that would rather remain behind in the wilderness, exploring lakes and trails for the first time and living a more peaceful pace of life. But these trips into the wilderness always come to an end, and as the trip leader I always want to make sure that we safely finish each trip. So we loaded our gear after a hearty breakfast and continued our journey back to the Mudro entry point. We paddled out of Gun and then across Fairy, Boot and Fourtown without any hitches, but as we started the 3-stage portage between Fourtown and Mudro, Mother Nature wanted to make sure that we had things to remember the trip by, so the sky which had started without nary a cloud earlier that morning suddenly turned dark and then opened up with a torrent of rain that kept us soaking wet until we got back to our vehicle.

All in all it was a great trip. We had extreme heat, some heavy downpours, some windy days and some amazing wilderness meals and epic fishing. Even though we were all soaked as we loaded canoes back on our vehicle, we were already planning on a return trip.