BWCA -- Day 4, Elton Lake to Jenny

Little Saganaga, North Shore

This was one of the richest days, and the longest day. I left my site at Elton Lake early after a nasty experience the night before. I had set up camp at a really nice site on Elton Lake near the portage from Makwa. Around 8 PM when I was going over some maps on a rock outcropping next to the lake, there was some noisy buzzing back toward my tent. It was a large swarm of ginormous flying insects that were dive bombing around my tent. I went back to the tent and also saw a hole in the ground with a rock on top that was filled with most-lively maggots. This was just two feet from my tent. I figured that the last camper had buried fish guts in the middle of the best tent location at the campsite. Think.. What to do? I pulled out the stakes and relocated my tent 30 feet away to another location by dragging it by its footprint (the footprint is a plastic sheet that matches the base of the tent that you use to protect the flooring). But after that I was freaked out enough that I left at 6 the next morning. As I was leaving I heard a pack of wolves howling on the other side of the lake.

I would like to enter this picture into my own "inanimate things that look like people" contest. Mr. Tree, above might be saying, "Welcome to the  Other Side." After paddling between the two islands you see here, I entered strange waters.

North region of Little Sag take from a tiny islet

I reached Little Saganaga Lake after a couple of portages from Elton. Little Sag is not little. It is a large, scenic lake with lots of islands. My route took me from the south end to the north. The north end is a burned out, forbidding region that is also highly photogenic. There were a group of islands that separated the calm form the windy portion of the lake.

Young moose on the creek between Rattle and Gabimichigami Lakes.

 After leaving Little Sag, I paddled through Rattle Lake and took the portage to The large island-less Gabimichigami. The portage followed a rocky creek where I sat down to eat lunch of spicy tuna, nutella out of the jar (plastic!), and sour lemon drops. As I ate I was greeted by ma moose and her two teenagers. I sat for a while taking pictures with my telephoto lens. After a while when they wouldn't get any closer, I figured I would get closer to them. But they got scared and ran away. They shouldn't have been scared; I'm not a wolf after all; or a hunter.

Bridge over Mueller Falls. Check out the gusset plate.
 

Mueller Falls

This not a good bridge to linger on.