It was disheartening leaving there so early. I didn’t know we could bring big guns up there though…
It was definitely a strange start to our trip as we were heading up on 35W, we saw a ton of cops on an overpass in Blaine. Chris said, “huh, jumper…” kinda jokingly. No joke, dead guy on the freeway, looked like he got hit by a car after he jumped off… I guess the story around here was he had murdered his GF earlier and then took his own life this way. Weird. That was at 4am on the way up…
As you can see, I’m back in civilization already. Crap. The weather turned ugly the first night, rain and T-storms and we were on top of a rock, but our (Chris and I’s) tent was in a little gully and I woke up with a wet sleeping pad, arm, sleeping bag, and we had an instant water bed. We did see a moose on the way up and a bear on the way back on the road to Sawbill Lake. That was pretty sweet. We gathered up our stuff and were really excited to have sun and the wind at our back as we launched! Sawbill lake is pretty dang long, about 2.5 hrs to paddle to some sites at the end of the lake. We set up and went fishing. I was stuck with Rick, so my luck was already on the outs. We came back when we heard some thunder. I’d hate to be stuck out on a lake too far out during a thunderstorm w/ no motor! Of course we were skunked fishing, but Chris and Mike brought back 3 walleye.
Then the weather got rough. Non-stop rain the next day. It actually started off with some sun and wind, got most of our stuff dry by, oh, 9 or 10 am. Then we put most of it in the tent and went fishing. Again I’m with Rick. That was the least of my aggravation. No fish, rain started. Never stopped. It was miserable, cold rain. We headed back to the campsite and hoped it would clear. I peeked into the tent and it was getting wet again. Everyone was crabby, our rainsuits were leaking, boots and feet were wet, and from what we remembered, it was only going to get colder. A LOT colder. After some humming and ha-ing, we packed up and went back to Sawbill outfitters. Wen we got there, the sun broke out. *insert curse word*
All was not lost. We hit up an American Inn in Silver Bay, cheap, swimming pool, hot tub, sauna, free breakfast. On the way home we decided to stop off and see some sights. This included the Temperance River (if we had stayed, we would have gone to the lake where it starts) and gooseberry falls. We also hit up a smoked fish store (awesome spicy jerky), stopped in Duluth for a while, and cringed all the way home as it just got nicer and nicer.
