Killarney, Sept 2

Packing up time...today is a big day. By the end of today we should do as much traveling as much in two days as we did in five days back when I was pregnant with Matthew. Plus a bonus portage.

Bagging things...everything has to be put away in a compact way.

It's no coincidence that Nathan is always busy packing in the photos...it's a reflection of reality. He's eager to get going! Hopefully everyone else pulls their weight a bit too!

Finally, we are on our way! We head over to our next portage.

Here it is. As we unload someone's very annoying dog jumps in our canoe. And over our gear. We were not impressed.

Oh well, nothing to do but to keep going. Wipe off the dirty smears. Forwards march! It was a midsize portage. Not so tiring, but good practice for later today.

On David Lake, we have a ways to paddle yet.

    Float plane coming in! It circled overhead for a while...presumably waiting for us to get a bit further along, so we weren't in the way. It was pretty cool to watch.

3 km. For real. Whose idea was this again? We all bravely pack up our bags and plan to carry everything over in one big heavily lug. After all, it's faster that way, right?

We've got this.

Well, we definitely needed a long lunch break after, maybe the first kilometer. We were all bushed. At this point we decided to leave behind some gear and come back for it. It would probably be faster this way, since we were just crawling along under the weight of everything. At any rate, we made it!! Look how tuckered out these kids look! This end of the portage looks so familiar! I remember hanging out here for a very long time with some little kiddoes waiting for Philip to come back with another pack. This is Great Mountain Lake.

After all that hard work we need to hunt for one last portage to Fish Lake. It's back there somewhere, but we can't find a sign anywhere. We finally decide that sign or no sign, it must be on this very mucky approach and we will just have to slurp our way up to solid ground and get to the trail past that.

Made it at last! Dinner always tastes really good if you've worked really hard for it.

A relaxing fire before bed. I'm looking forward to a good sleep--I'm feeling a bit stiff. Oddly.