Tuesday Aug 31 Wabakimi

Beautiful morning. Once the fog clears up we can see how nice it looks. ;)

Evelyn did her hair. A braid of braids. I love it. Especially since it is neat, with no knots in it.

We are on the water before 10am. Which is good. Turns out we have seven portages today. Seven.

Empty the canoe. Carry everything across. Fill up the canoe again.

I think we got pretty efficient at it. It was kinda nice to see all the waterfalls too. Not that they were huge or impressive. Interesting and pretty, though. And mostly, they were rapids, not waterfalls. We would only paddle a short ways before the next portage came up.

Oh yay, we get to paddle for a ways this time! We are making our way down Lookout River. It only looks like a river when we get to the portages.

Can you see the next portage up ahead?

We got to one that just looked to pretty to rush by. So we stopped.

Evelyn was thrilled that she'd get a chance to swim in the rapids.

Everyone enjoyed the break.

Even Matthew got wet and cleaned up at the same time. There were some bloodsuckers discovered in the calmer sections. Which deterred the swimmers once they noticed.

I swam out to check out the further end. We are supposed to be able to "line it" and get our canoes past that section without unloading. But it isn't obvious from here whether we should go to the right or the left side.

It was the left side. Made it through at last!

Just to prove that I was in Wabakimi too, here is a shot of me working hard.

At the next portage we stopped for a lunch. My canoe was the first one loaded, so we had some extra time waiting for the others to get loaded up.

Ahead of us is the next portage. So close by!

They are still loading up...

might as well have a nap while we are waiting.

And once again we are on open water. This time I won't complain (if I were the type to complain, I mean).

We head on just a bit further. Tomorrow the map says we have a hard portage. Steep. The hardest one we are supposed to have to do. So we decide to get as close to it as we can.

At last! We have our campsite. Along with our own private beach. There are actually two beaches...they are back to back. We had dinner on the one in the back where there was more sun in the evening. There were fresh caribou tracks here. We know they can't have been here any later than Sunday evening when the rain stopped. But that crow. it is here every morning and after almost every portage. So we don't get anywhere near any caribou. They know exactly where we are. All the time.