Saturday, June 23, 2018 Peter meets me at Fenske Lake Campground. Fenske is a nice quiet campground and a good staging area for BWCA trips. We headed to EP 16 and spoke with a group that stayed on Agnes the night before. They warned us that a bear was moving around the campsites and they had gotten a picture. We were on the trail about 12:30 and worked our way down the river. As we reached Nina Moose Lake, there was a thunderstorm moving through and we headed to the campsite to the right of the river entry. When we reached the campsite it was being guarded by hen Mallard. Since the storm was moving out of our way, we decided to proceed without risking an encounter with said Mallard. It was cool being able to see the sand beech on the north end of the lake as I had read about in trip reports on BWCA.com. Just after entering the river again, we saw a Moose & calf, but they were gone before I could even start reaching for the camera. We reached the first portage (75 rods) and the end of the trail brought us in sight of a nice boulder falls. A little further down the river brought the 105 rod portage that was next to the river most of the way. Pretty walk & then a short paddle to Agnes. It was a pretty paddle through the trees into Agnes. It was about 6:00pm and we decided to push on to Oyster for the night. I mistook the Agnes to Oyster river portage as the beautiful one that many have written about from Stuart to the Dahlgren river falls. The portage was a gradual up and steep down, seemed tough at the time (or maybe I am soft), but in hindsight just a challenging BW portage. The challenging part was getting into Oyster, as the path was a mud bog or floating grass bog. Peter made me nervous saying you don’t want to fall through this, then after we were safely in the canoe he commented “that wasn’t so bad!” These are the words one hears after narrowly escaping death by falling through the bog into the mud and sinking to the bottom. No risk, no adventure! We completed the portage into Oyster at 8:20. Checked out campsite 1774, looked okay, but thought we would check the other sites, as it was only 8:30, and how many idiots could be looking for a place to stay on a popular lake this late at night. Turned out, it was only us, as the other sites were full, and we returned about 9:30 to claim this nice site for the next two nights. Maybe I will learn the lesson of departing the EP earlier in the day at some point in life, but probably not. It was a good day, long and hard, but we finished it off with Mac & Cheese with rehydrated hamburger. Hit the spot and slept well.