4.25 miles, 5 portages, 479 rods

We woke up to lots of bugs—so much that we cooked, packed up our stuff, and tried eating in the canoe on the water, which still ended up being too buggy. The morning was spent hauling our stuff over marshy, mosquitoey portages, later dubbed the “4 ½ mile bog slog” by Jason. He also had the epiphany that the mullet is the perfect BW hairstyle because it keeps hair out of your face while protecting your neck from bugs and sun. Later that night we discovered that Sparky has a mullet, confirming this hypothesis.

I perfected my flip-ups and portaging skills by taking the boat the entire time. I realized I’m going to have to carry ones twice this size the rest of the summer so I need to get in shape. There were some pretty views and LOTS of flowers: Columbine, violets, and many others we couldn’t correctly identify. We also saw lots of turtles and a 2 ½ foot garter snake, named so because they look like old-fashioned men’s’ garters. In fact, the biggest population of snakes anywhere occurs in Manitoba (right across the Canadian border). There up to 15,000 garter snakes at a time will hole up in one of many caves for the winter in a hibernatarium.

After our last long haul we finally arrived at Tuscadora—big water at last!!! We found a beautiful campsite with a rock peninsula sticking out into the water. After the last of the mosquito swarm that had followed us from the portage either fled or died, we were in a virtually mosquito free zone! It was a lovely respite and we decided to take an afternoon of leisure, hanging out on the rocks, reading Sparky, drying out clothes, etc. We made “belly bombers,” biscuits fried and served with butter and honey. We dodged in and out of the intermittent rain, watched the clouds, talked and had a lovely afternoon. Voyageur stew for dinner, and watching the sunset with a nearly 360 degree view before bedtime. We got up at 3 AM to look at the stars (when it amazingly looked like the sun was already starting to rise), but because of clouds we could only see Cassiopeia and Signus.