Well, thank God, Uncle Clint felt better the next morning. We would continue all together. In order to make up for the day off, we had to paddle 15 miles that day.

Except Uncle Clint perhaps, we all felt pretty rested. We paddled up a long skinny lake called Cirrus. It was fun navigating. Between the 4 boats we had 3 different types of maps. This woked well. When one map was a little confusing or even incorrect the other maps would clear things up.

To navigate we looked for creeks coming into the lake, bays along the sides of lakes and islands. It was not hard to navigate if you kept paying attention. If you did not pay attention you could fairly easily get lost. Most of the hills are about the same hieght and the same geographic features repeat themselves often. For instance, you could see a large bay with a narrow entrance and think that is very unusual then a few miles later you might see something very similar.

We paddled through very typical Canadian Shield topography. The hills are not very high. Everything is on solid rock with a lot of lichen clinging to exposed parts and pine and birch trees growing in the thinest soil you can imagine.

We stopped for lunch that day on a huge piece of granite that angled about 30 degrees out of the water then levelled off mostly. It was not an ideal spot since we had to climb up this rock that was covered with lichen and moss which made it slippery.

We made do just fine though. Bob (aka Rotten Bastard) had foolishly been fishing early that morning and caught yet another nice lake trout. (with each fish he caught, Rotten Bastard's nick name stuck to him more and more). The foolish thing about this, is that RB and John had to drag the fish all morning, about 7 miles.

Fish get heavier the more you talk about them but this was no small lake trout, a few pounds at least, so John and Bob worked harder than anyone else that morning. John named the fish "Sea Anchor".

Needless to say, they were anxious to eat Sea Anchor. So at lunch I made beans and rice or some such thing and Bob and Uncle Clint started a fire in a small crevice in the rock and cooked up good old Sea Anchor.

It was sunny in the afternoon and a slight headwind kicked up. Hugh kept us going by telling us what a great spot we were going to: Sue Falls. There would be this beautiful bay with a giant waterfall pouring into it on the far side.

I only remember the last hour or so being tiresome. We stopped at a campsite just about 200 yards short of the bay. Joan and I went on to check out the bay and found an awesome campsite there. Unfortunately when we returned to the rest of the group, they had already setup camp at the other place. It turned out to be a fine place though.

After setting up camping a few of us paddled over to Sue Falls. It really is a great water fall. It drops a few hundred feet, although not continuously. It sort of stair steps its way down these big black rocks. There was a fair amount of water going through the middle and lots of small channels flowing down the edges of the rocks where you could play in them.

That day was Katy's 40th birthday. After dinner we brought out the water bottles labelled "Tequila" and "Canadian Club", etc. Hugh's wife Kelda had baked 40 cookies and we had lugged the tupperware containers in along with 40 sparkling candles. Hugh and Bob and I spread the cookies out on 4 plates and stuck a candle in each one. It was a bit of trouble lighting them so we lost the surprise factor but we all walked out of the woods with the cookies and candles and sang happy birthday.

Bob started experimenting with the Tequila, lake water, and some cool-aid mixes he bought at several locations between Maryland and Thunder Bay. After many tastings he came up with an amazingly good Margarita. It did not taste like Tequila or Cool-aid. It tasted just like a margarita. The trick apparently, is to mix tequila with water, pre-sweetened lemonade, and non-sweetened limeaid. I guess only Bob knows the proportions. It is much better than the Stegasaurus cool-aid mixed with grain alcohol we had 6 years ago.

The 15 mile paddle had us a little worn out so the party did not drag out until the wee hours. It was a good thing because we got the usual dawn awakening in the morning. I'm glad I wasn't wearing a watch. I'm sure the hour was unmentionable.

I remember a plesant little paddle across the lake to the first portage of the day. The paddle was sort of the calm before the storm.

To me, that portage was the worst. It broke me in. There was another one that was more difficult but by then I learned some techniques to make it less painful.

It's hard to describe the pain involved with a portage. I guess there are 3 types of loads each with its own sort of pain. There's the Duluth pack loads which are bad, the canoe loads which totally suck and the loose crap loads which can be outright torture.

The Duluth packs are enormous canvas packs with backpack straps on them. They have huge flaps that fold over the top and buck in 3 places to the back of the pack. This allows for an almost limitless amount of stuff to put in them. As a limit, we used how much you are willing to carry plus %20. The food bags were the heaviest but had the advantage of getting lighter as the trip went on. The equipment bag, with axe, shovel, lantern, pots, etc. was somewhat lighter but items tended to stick into your back as you hiked.

You never took just a Duluth pack. You usually took a Duluth pack and a couple life preservers and maybe a lawn chair. Unlike a frame pack, the Duluth pack sticks way out behind your back, requiring you to lean over to balance. I found walking on rocks more difficult with Duluth packs than with a canoe. Once I saw Uncle Clint slip on some rocks while wearing a Duluth pack. It looked and sounded really bad but he fell on top of the pack so he was okay. Also, I think Uncle Clint is made of something just a little harder than Granite. No matter what happens to him, he just gets up and keeps going. He must have been sufferring more than the rest of us on that portage after being so sick 48 hours before.

Carrying our canoe, Der Zeitung, on that portage was the worst. After a couple hundred meters it feels like the canoe is sitting on nothing but bone. There's just a burn around the back of your neck that gets harder and harder to ignore. I tried to find places where I could rest the bow of the canoe in the crouch of a tree so that I could get the weight off for a while without picking the whole canoe back up from the ground. Sometimes it was hard to find a good place and the bow would get caught in some brush or some vines. I discovered a whole vocabularity of profanity I didn't know I had.

Somewhere on that portage though, I learned to carry a boat a little more comfortable. After that, it was never so bad.

The loose crap loads, however, never got easier. Loose crap is when you have 4 paddles under one arm, 3 life preservers around your neck, 2 or 3 fishing rods with those damn grapling hook lures catching ever piece of brush, and a fishing net with a tacklebox in it. After about 100 yards your arm is killing you and the paddles are starting to slip forward and vines are dragging behind the fishing net - and you still have 800 meters to go. You hate to set stuff down because it takes forever to pick it back up again.

Even though we thought the first portage would be the worst, that one surpassed it. It was a bit muddy and swampy at the end so we paddled a very short distance to a big rock and stopped for lunch. We stayed there a long time, swimming despite the icy water.

I told Katy, "I am not the same man that got up this morning."

Next: Mutiny on Batchewan Bay