Friday, September 16, 2016

I woke up sometime around 7:30. I let Claire sleep a bit because she only had 4 hours of sleep the night before. A red squirrel was throwing pine cones at me from the top of a nearby pine. I could see the pine cones thrown up right at the top of the tree and then land with a thud near me. He did not want us there. We weren’t in any sort of a hurry and finally left Cherokee at 11. The Sitka portage was harder than we thought. There was a very steep incline immediately that got the heart pumping and it felt like we were recovering from it the rest of the portage. It would definitely be easier coming from Sitka. 

Sitka was beautiful. We wished there was a site there. The next portage to North Temperance wasn’t bad. It was also a beautiful lake. We checked the middle site and it was only ok. There wasn’t much of a view. We wanted to try for the north island site. There was a canoe fishing just south of the island and we figured they were probably staying there. I thought we should go find out if they were actually staying there because it wasn’t far away, but Claire wanted to try for the 5 star site on South Temperance. 

The portage to South Temperance was easy but the landing was rocky and deep. Right as we came out of the bay we saw the middle north site was taken. It looked like they had just gotten there because they were setting up. After a little confusion with the islands we found the prime southern site. It only looked ok from the water and as we got closer we saw it was occupied. At some point the wind picked up a bit and a drizzle turned to a light rain for 10-15 minutes. We headed towards the NW site that I was pretty interested in. It looked open until we were right on top of it. As we were making our way east a canoe passed us. We asked if they knew if they far eastern site was open and they said it was when they got there two days ago. We should have asked but we thought they might have been the ones fishing on North Temperance. We made our way to the east site and it was also taken. The last 3 sites all looked open until we were right on top of them. I briefly thought about checking out Brule since it was a short 10 rod portage, with 3 sites near the portage, but I thought it was a little risky not knowing if they were any good or if they were taken, plus we knew that at least 2 of the 3 on North Temperance should be open. 

We decided to head back to North Temperance. Just as we were getting to the portage a father and daughter in an aluminum canoe were not far behind. I was surprised how big of a pack the girl carried (maybe age 10ish?). They were very friendly. We decided to head back to the middle site and had a hard time deciding if we should try for the north island site and risk it being taken. Claire looked at the middle site again. There was a large-ish downed tree almost over the fire grate and we decided if we lost the middle site while looking at the northern site, we could just take the southern site since the middle wasn’t so great. The father/daughter saw us leave the middle site as they came around the corner and it looked like they were headed for that site. 

We circled around the west side of the island where our maps showed the site. We found it on the NE side, it was open! It didn’t look great from the water but it turned out to be fantastic. By now it was almost 4pm. If we would have gone straight there instead of going to South Temperance, we could have been there by 1:30. 

We walked around the NE side of the island a bit. We had an even harder time finding firewood here. I started a fire but failed. Claire of course got a nice one going. She is a master fire builder. We didn’t have an expansive view of the lake but the moonrise was right in the middle of our view and it was amazing. It was a beautiful night so we enjoyed it and finally got to bed well after midnight.

~Cherokee Lake, Sitka Lake, North Temperance Lake, South Temperance Lake, North Temperance Lake

Lakes Traveled:   Cherokee Lake, Sitka Lake, North Temperance Lake, South Temperance Lake, North Temperance Lake,