We took off from County K at 3:40. beautiful fall afternoon, blue skies and hues of yellow in the trees, a certain crispness in the air but nothing that would suggest the inch of snow forecast for the night. Joel and I eased into our seats, it took Mellie quite some time to settle down, too many interesting smells and sights. She really gets in and out of the canoe with ease, without hesitation. Eventually she took a position in which her head was more or less out of the way. But 90 pounds of dog did put our heavily loaded craft a bit off kilter and it took some coaxing and shoving, yelling and pleading to get the beast finally into a position where she did not provoke me to sit on the right-most edge of the seat
Paddling went well. A succession of riffles demanded constant attention but we only had to step out once to get unstuck from a submerged gravel bank. Again, I appreciated my purchase of the Asolo FSN 95 hiking boots, completely waterproof thanks to a Goretex membrane. Three inches of water, even with a gentle current did not phase them. I think Craig appreciated the hang-up as he was soloing. He did not have the occasional luxury of taking a break.
Our wildlife sightings were dominated by birds. We quickly stopped counting eagles, there were just too many. Brown-speckled juveniles and white-headed adults, individuals and pairs. They might fly up, only to settle back on a tall tree a few hundred feet farther downstream, to watch us pass by. Other frequent birds were the kingfisher and blue jay, the former being quite shy, flying off down stream, sometimes circling back, crossing our path, complaining loudly. The jays appeared in small groups, twos or threes, their bright plumage a nice contrast to the browns, yellows ad greens of the leaves.
The stretch from County Road K to Group Site 25.3 (the number equates the distance to the confluence with the St. Croix River, as provided on the National Park Service brochure and map) was 5.9 miles. For once, we felt not rushed to beat nightfall. We made it to camp with plenty of daylight to spare. The spacious camp site (a group site after all) hat nice, level tent spots. Pitching tents did not take much time and we were soon busy starting a nice fire. Not much work in terms of dinner prep, the monster rib eye steaks from Widmer's fit nicely between the halves of Mexican kaiser buns, a great way to have a plate-less dinner. Vegetables consisted of tomato slices, i cold have brought steak sauce but the flavor of these butter-knife steaks was such that the eaters did not notice this missing condiment. Joel and Craig insisted that these were the best slabs of meat they had ever eaten. Even if they said this to be nice to the cook, I have to say these steaks were pretty darn good! The culinary experience was rounded out by the Martinis Joel brought along. Stirred, not shaken, excellent. By the time we were done, bright stars overhead gave us the mood lighting, but not the northern lights we had hoped. By now the temps had dropped below freezing and we were eager to crawl into our sleeping bag even though it was only 9:00 PM. Mellie made a nest between Joel and me, close to our heads. I read a little and turned off the lights by 9:45.
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