Packed up after breakfast to begin the trip out. As we didn’t remember to turn the canoes over, I bailed many gallons of water out of each. Live and learn. We planned to make it to Nina Moose Lake, which means 4 portages, with 3 of them longer than 60 rods, so we wanted to have all day. This was the calmest day of the trip, with Boulder Bay and later Lake Agnes both mirror smooth. We crossed the steep portage into the unnamed lake on the north side, and headed toward the portage on the other side of the lake. On the way Donnie hooked and lost a fine smallmouth below a little inlet stream. We unloaded at the portage, strung the fly rods and headed to the base of the inlet stream. Nanny missed a nice smallmouth on a popper and let out a girlish shriek of surprise. We moved around to the bigger stream and she caught her first smallmouth, which put up a tough fight. She landed a nice pike a few casts later. Cuz caught a pike and Donnie caught a couple, and then I caught one on my fly rod. We decided to call this lake Fishing Lake, as we were all successful. While here, we saw a mink at the stream and 3 otters in the lake. At the portage we saw a grouse and heard more drumming in the woods nearby. I ‘d only heard them in the spring before. We continued to hear them from time to time all day.

We decided to cross Agnes while it was still calm, and it really was smooth as glass. It was such a different crossing from the rough trip of a few days before that it felt surreal. Oddly enough, the smooth-as-glass water made both girls a little queasy and light-headed. With the shoreline reflection, it was difficult to get any sense of a horizon. It was a very unexpected sensation. We were amazed to see how much more colorful the leaves were than when we arrived a few days ago. Agnes was easy to cross; the stream to the south was easy, too. We got to the first portage in time to see a couple of guys with an aluminum canoe finishing their portage. These guys were really loaded, with 2 coolers that we saw, suitcases, lawn chairs and lots more stuff packed in black trash bags. They got in the canoe in an inch of water and basically pried it over the rocks to where it would float. They had so much stuff that the stern man literally couldn’t see the bow man. Never saw anything like it. We offered to help but they insisted, ‘We got it, We got it’. Hate to see the expression on the outfitter’s face when they return the canoe.

While we were unloading, 2 guys walked up and provided a great contrast to the previous group. These guys looked like they didn’t have an ounce of body fat between them, had only 2 packs, and obviously single portaged what little they were carrying. It took them about 30 seconds to get the canoe in the water and smoothly glide away. I joked that they were stalking the other 2 guys and planned to raid their camp in the night to grab the beer. On second thought, though, these guys didn’t look like the domestic beer type…. We did the 2 portages into Nina Moose pretty well, and camped on the peninsula on the north side. We joked about the day being so calm, that it must be the calm before the storm. Turned out that we were right on the money. Vicious thunderstorm during the night, and it rained even more than last night. However, we stayed dry, so it wasn’t too bad. We were definitely on the downhill stretch now.

Quote of the day (from me, after another long day of paddling and portaging): “We may not be running out of propane, but we’re certainly running out of gas.”