Old Camping Journal

Most of you probably don't know that every summer around Labor Day my dad and I head up into the Canadian wilderness for a 1.5-2 week camping trip in the Quetico Park. And no, this is nothing like Jellystone Park or other camp grounds you may be thinking of. It's pure, untouched wilderness that has been designated as a wilderness park to keep it that way. The little island we spend our time is here: 48.377713,-91.209903. The trek begins roughly 10 miles (as the eagle flies) south east in Saganaga Lake. There is a little island, Hook Island, on US-Canada boarder (48.225049,-90.963367). We get dropped off there at ~7:30am with our 3 packs and our canoe. These are packs weighing 70, 35, and 30 lbs each, along with an extra 65lbs for the canoe once the roads and other gear gets lashed in. From there we paddle out south west, around Cache Point, and into Cache Bay to stop at the ranger station for our camping and fishing permits and to catch up with Ranger Janice. She's been manning that station for 26 years now, and we've seen her all but 1 of our ~14 trips there. After that we head north and up what is known as the "Falls Chain" route into the park. It gets it's name from the 8 or so waterfalls/rapids that must be portaged around in order to make it to Kawnipi Lake. Portages are best described as poorly-maintained trails through the woods. They are rocky, rooty, marshy, terrible things. As long as you can physically get a canoe from start to finish, no maintenance is done. You often find downed trees you have to step over, creeks you need to leap across, along with some truly dangerous drops less than a foot off of the narrow portage. All while carrying over 100lbs of gear (2 packs or a pack and the canoe). All in all, we travel something like 20 miles of portages and paddling in a really long, 10-12 hour travel day. Much longer than any outfitter would recommend, but we want to get to our little island asap so we can set up for some fishing and only make camp once.
Lucky for us, that first day is the most energy we'll have to expend for quite awhile. We'll spend the next 5-8 days just chilling on Kawnipi and fishing. We've even cut down our exploring over the years as we find more and more great fishing spots in close proximity. Each one works better/worse in various weather conditions, so we just wake up and see what mother nature has in store for us and head out to the appropriate spot. Fish for a few hours keeping only enough for lunch, then pull off at any number of great spots for shore lunch of fresh fried fillets. You really can't get any better fish than what we have. Within about 30 minutes the fish for from swimming around on the stringer to being fried and on our plates. Typically we eat mainly walleye, but depending on what we get first it could also be smallmouth bass or northern pike. You never know what they day will bring, so we just keep the first 2-3 fish we catch. After lunch and the occasional short nap we repeat the sequence for dinner. 1 less fish and a side dish is really the only difference. It's the perfect life.
Dad wisely keeps a journal during the trips so we can actually remember what happened when afterwards. It's shocking how everything just blends together even after a couple days. And you see so many incredible things, it's easy to forget some of them. Everything including fishing highlights, weather conditions, wildlife seen gets written down. Dad will then type it all up in later in a more concise and flowing form. It's always interesting to see how many comments we make about the weather when we're there. Unlike home life, it really is the driving factor in everything you do. Where you fish, what you wear, even whether or not it's safe to even leave camp. We usually have at least 1 day every trip where a front moves in and the wind/waves prevent us from safely being out in the canoe. So the journal has constant references to temperature, cloud cover, wind speed and direction, etc.
So that's the gist of what we do. And for the first time, I'm going to start publishing the journal entries here. I'll start with the 2008 trip while dad assembles the official 2010 version. (We had to skip 2009 due to my shitty job working for hellish IQuum. Not that I'm bitter or anything...)
I'll start this week and put them out there in reasonable chunks with some edits made. I'm sure no one really wants to read every detail about the trip. Anyone that wants to hear more can just let me know and you can get the unedited version. And of course I can offer up many many stories from trips past.