8 miles, 6 portages, 258 rods

This morning we woke up to the view of a tricky spider that had spun a web in our rain fly to catch all of the mosquitoes that like to gather there. We were very pleased. We were off to a slow start, facing into the wind, as always. We met several groups in the portages. I have become a portage snob, critiquing bad treatment of boats and equipment, terrible paddling, etc. It rained during lunch and we met with wind everywhere. We were TIRED by the end of the day, especially myself who was still sick with a cold. We went to what looked like it would be a beautiful campsite and it was, but unfortunately it was high rock bluffs that would have required carrying the canoe nearly vertical to get it up to the site.

We ended up staying at a small mosquitoey spot and went to bed early after several Sparky stories. This is what he had to say: red squirrels store 2 years’ worth of food during the summer to be prepared for the winter and potentially bad crops the next year.