Light rain started falling around dawn at our North Bay island campsite. We both needed some extra sleep, so we stayed in the tent until about 7:30, hoping the rain would let up. I'm not sure I've ever slept so long in the wilderness. Nine and half hours. Ahhhhh.

Finally, we got out of the tent. Fortunately, no bear had swum to our campsite overnight to raid the low-hanging fruit. We got the food pack down ourselves and started the day right with some strong French press coffee.

The low-lying clouds drizzled off and on the whole morning. We didn't set up the rain tarp, though. There was a enough shelter under the pines where the tent was to keep our gear dry when opening up the packs in the light rain. A view of our campsite -

The island we were on was surrounded by a fringe of rock that is below the normal high-water line, but was exposed by September's lower lake level. Here's the view northward from the island's rocky fringe, under low clouds -

Scouting around out on the rock shelf we found these blue jay feathers -

Our departure from camp was slowed by sleeping in and the rainy morning, so we didn't start paddling until about 10:45. Once underway, we headed north up the empty, overcast bay, pausing momentarily to check out the scenic island shorelines -

Rock and moss -

We snuck behind the island at the north end of the bay en route to Isabella Creek -

Someone was camped at the entry to Lost Bay. It appeared to be a solo camper, probably the guy we had seen in the distance on the bay when we paddled in yesterday afternoon. He was the only other person we saw on North Bay, which is pretty unusual.

In the past we have had some trouble finding the marshy channel through the reeds that separate North Bay from the Isabella Creek route. But drawing on our experience from 2008, we readily found our way up now. As you can see from the picture below, the water was very shallow below the first beaver dam. Somehow we managed to get the canoe to the dam without having to stick our boots in the mud -

Then we got out on the dam and slid the canoe up and over. Standing up there we could see back over the reedy marsh to the occupied campsite on the bay. And the lone camper at the site was looking back, watching us do the liftover.

Once over the dam, there was plenty of water to paddle up the creek to the rapids just below the unnamed pond. We lined the canoe up those rapids, hopped back in to cross a small but deep pool of water below the beaver dam at the outlet of the pond, then unloaded the packs to lift the canoe over this dam. It was so high, with rocks all around, I was worried about stressing the boat if we slid it over fully loaded. Here's David on top of the second dam -

Looking from the dam up into the unnamed pond -

As we paddled across the pond, pausing to eat some power bars, the skies opened up. Fortunately, the rain stopped again by the time we got to Isabella Creek, which, along with Isabella Lake, was new territory for us. We had always bypassed the Isabellas before for alternative routes through the maze of small lakes in this area. But we really liked the Isabella route and will certainly do it again. Paddling up the meandering creek -

In places it got narrow and pretty shallow -

There's a nice sand bottom if you have to jump out of the canoe, but we could (barely) float through until the very end, where we had to line up this shallow, gravelly "rapids" -

At the head of the creek there is a short, steep portage up to Isabella Lake. This picture looks back at the creek from the portage -

The portage bypasses a steep rocky stretch of creek -

Beavers had done a little engineering at the other end of the portage, where the creek leaves Isabella Lake -

Paddling up Isabella Lake, we encountered a tandem canoe with a male-female team who had come from Sarah Lake. They were the only other people we saw out on the water today. With our late start, we were beginning to wonder if we would make it to Sarah, which had been our tentative destination for the day. We would take it as it came.

We really enjoyed long, narrow, scenic Isabella. We stopped for lunch at the campsite at the pinch point about halfway down the lake. The site sits high on a granite outcrop. The water is a little stinky at the only good take out point. And from the camping area it's a steep descent to a good spot to get water or go swimming. But the payoff is great views from the site. This picture looks eastward, the direction we came from -

And this one looks westward, the direction we were heading -

If you look closely at the picture above, you can just barely see smoke in the trees about a mile down the lake on the southern (left-hand) shore. There was a group hunkered down in camp there with a fire. We gave a little thought to stopping for the night at the nice campsite where we were at now, especially because the camping options between here and Sarah Lake are pretty mediocre. But we decided to press on after lunch.

Before departing, I sterilized some water with our new Steripen. We bought this because our water filters were always clogging with the microfauna and microflora that seem to thrive in canoe country's "pure" waters. We were pretty happy with the Steripen -

Continuing on our way, we paddled past the occupied campsite with the fire, and on to the portage to the first of two unnamed lakes on the way to Side Lake. Looking back from the portage landing across Isabella -

A different angle on Isabella -

This short portage seemed surprisingly rugged, especially with the canoe. The undergrowth had not been cleared in a while, and at one point saplings made it almost impossible to turn the canoe to go through two ancient pines that flanked the path. There were some slippery little rock ledges thrown in for good measure, too.

At the other end, there was a hint of blue in the overcast sky. The sun was popping out every once in a while, and when it did, the air felt downright sultry -

At this unnamed lake we were back to familiar territory. We crossed through here in 2005, when we exited from Sarah through this unnamed lake, and then on to North Bay via Nest and Point Lakes instead of the Isabella route. We quickly paddled across the little lake to the next portage, which goes to the next unnamed lake on the way to Side and Sarah. I recalled from 2005 that this portage goes up steeply at the start but is not hard. This is the view from the rock face at the beginning of that portage -

And this is the view from the landing at the other end of the portage on the second unnamed lake -

We had camped on this second unnamed lake on the penultimate night of our 2005 trip. Earlier that day we had checked out the lone campsite on Side Lake, rejected it as inadequate, continued on to this lake, and decided to take the site here, even though it was not ideal either.

Now, with those limited options between here and Sarah Lake in mind, we reconnoitered our 2005 site again for possible use tonight. The little lake is very nice, but we decided against staying at the campsite this time round, primarily because there were widowmakers towering over the only good tent pad, and the forecast before we left home predicted thunderstorms tonight.

Pressing on, we came to the long portage to Side Lake. At the landing -

I remembered this portage from 2005 mostly because of the very steep slope at the opposite end. I had forgotten, though, how rugged it is the whole way. There are several granite ledges that were especially slippery on this rainy day. I had to put the canoe down at least once to maneuver up the ledges. Pictures rarely do justice to these tricky spots -

The portage is also scenic. Here's a reindeer-lichen-covered ridge along the way -

The steep slope at the far end goes down to Side Lake. It is kind of reminiscent of the portage between Mudro and Sandpit. We carried our gear down the slope on this trip. In this picture I'm walking back up between loads -

There is a striking rock structure by the portage at the Side Lake end -

Looking further up the lake -

It was about 4:00 by the time we finished carrying our gear to Side. We decided we better give the Side Lake campsite a closer look now, even though we had rejected it in 2005. The sky was darkening with a new front of storm clouds. If we did not camp on Side, we would have to cross the long portage into Sarah Lake tonight. And then we didn't know how far we would have to go to find a good campsite on Sarah.

With these considerations in mind, we checked out the Side Lake site, and we thought it looked better than we recalled from our prior trip. Which is not to say it was great. But we decided to stay.

After unloading the canoe, the first order of business was a swim to wash up. But as soon as we started stripping down, big drops of rain began falling. We quickly switched gears and put the tarp up first. Then we went for a quick swim in the cold rainfall to rinse away the grime.

It kept raining off and on as we finished setting up camp. I tried to gather some dry wood for a fire to cook our sausage dinner, but dry wood (or any wood) was hard to find because the campsite was wedged between a big granite dome (slippery when wet!) and a beaver pond back behind the little bay were on. So there was not much room to move around or look for wood. At least that's my excuse for the fire being a dismal failure. If we didn't have a stove and had to rely on fires for all our cooking (as we did when I canoed in this area as a kid), we would probably starve. Fortunately, our Zup's sausages and boiled potatoes still turned out great when stove-cooked.

After dinner, we sipped some Maker's Mark under the tarp as thunderstorms rolled in and brought much stronger winds with them. Despite falling temperatures, a few bugs braved the weather, hoping for a final meal from us before the first frost. Later on we read for a bit in the tent, then turned out the lights at the early hour of 9:00.

The storm that moved in during dinner kept blowing hard with strong gusts and spattering rain throughout the night. But we stayed snug and dry in our trusty tent, happy we had taken refuge at this little site.