Saturday, May 28
It was rainy in the morning, so we stayed in the tent and read. We were both reading Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games series. Over the course of the trip, we both finished the books that we had. It slightly cleared up in later in the morning, so we decided to go fishing and exploring. We went north to Kivaniva Lake. The fishing was actually really good. We caught a lot of northerns and a few walleyes. We went back to camp for lunch.
It was raining on and off in the early afternoon. At one point it looked like it was going to clear up, and I wanted to explore north of Kivaniva, so we went back out. When we got to the north end of Kivaniva, we looked back and saw a black bank of clouds. We knew that it didn't look good, so we paddled as hard as we could back to camp. We made it just in time. We were able to secure the canoe and camp before the storm came.
There were a couple of canoes trying to get to the Malberg portage, one a couple of minutes ahead of the other. Just as the second canoe rounded the corner (so I couldn't see it anymore), the wind hit. I've never had wind like that in the BWCA. It must have been 50 MPH. The stakes on our tent and tarp were ripped up and tossed into the woods. One of the tent stake lines on the tent snapped. The tarp was flapping free in the wind, in danger of ripping off the rope completely. We had to shout to each other to be heard above the wind. We were able to secure the rest of our gear and waited for the wind to subside, which it did in a few minutes. Then it was eerily calm... The sun came out, and the sunlight hitting the trees against the backdrop of the dark storm clouds was breathtaking.
After the Storm
I was really worried about the canoes that had passed by. I knew that the last canoe would not have made it to the portage before the wind came. I grabbed the first aid kit (just in case) and our paddles, and we jumped in the canoe. I expected to see havoc when we made it around the corner. Instead, we found two fishermen calmly casting from their canoe towards shore. I was a bit perplexed, so we went and talked to them. Apparently, they were the first canoe. The second canoe that went by did capsize, but they were OK. They had snapped a paddle and were wet, but they were on the portage now and were fine.
The two guys did give us a fishing tip. They told us that there were usually big northerns at the bottom of the rapids by the Malberg portage. I was excited to try, so we went back to camp and got our fishing gear. We paddled to the portage and tried fishing both from shore and from the canoe. We had no luck, but we were able to get a nice picture of the rapids.
Scenic Rapids
After dinner we discussed what we wanted to do the next day. We weren't planning on going back home until Monday, but we decided to actually leave tomorrow (Sunday). A big part of the decision to leave was because we had run out of reading material. I really enjoy fishing, but Auralee likes to have a book along, so we decided to head back on Sunday and spend Monday playing pickleball with my family.
Saturday, May 30
We woke up early and packed up camp. We paddled through all of the same lakes as on the way in. Usually we can cut of 25% of the time on the way back, and this trip was no exception. It had taken us about 6 hours to get to camp on the first day. It only took us 4 1/2 hours to get out. We were able to single portage a couple of the longer portages, so that helped a lot. We drove back and stayed at my parents' house that night and had fun relating all of our experiences on the trip.
