I awoke bright and early on day 2 after having a really restful night of sleep. The sun was shining and the lake was mostly calm. I began the morning with a little breakfast of oatmeal with granola and chocolate chips and proceeded to wander around the island to see what I could see.

Eventually everyone was up and ready for the day and we started packing to begin our journey. Today only involved a couple of lakes, and was mostly river time with lots of small portages. The Phoebe River was flowing pretty well, so we were able to make decent time, stopping for lunch on the banks of Hazel Lake.

The hot sun meant that we needed to keep up with sunscreen, which I diligently did on every area of my exposed skin… except for my legs. I foolishly forgot that I was often sitting in the canoe with my pant legs pulled up, due to all of the water wading we were doing when landing and launching at portages. When we got to camp that night both Beth and I discovered we had gotten some solid sunburn on our lower extremities. Something we’d need to be careful of as we continued the trip.

As we approached Knight Lake we ran into some rock fields that resulted in needing to get out of the canoe to lighten it enough to float it over the obstacles. One of them took us a fair bit of time to navigate with each of us taking turns getting wetter than we wanted. We decided to each try some different paths through the area and sometimes our canoe won the better line, and other times Mike and Beth found the clearer path. This entire section wasn’t very long, but it was much slower than just paddling or portaging.

Eventually we make it to one last small bit of beaver dam rapids that was shallow enough for Lisa and I to power through and we were securely on Knight Lake. From here it was just a short paddle down to our destination on Phoebe Lake, but as we approached we felt the wind pick up and saw that Phoebe was going to test us. Large waves greeted us as we came out of the canal and paddling because a challenge. Lisa called out that there was a campsite on the north side of the lake that would put us closer to our exit in the morning and so we began our search.

Many of the campsites on Phoebe require walking up a steep hill from the shoreline, and this one was no exception. The landing was rough and difficult, and getting the canoes out of the water presented a bit of a challenge. However, once we were securely on-shore we found a delightful campsite that was well sheltered from the wind, and afforded a tiny bit of a view of the roiling lake far below. We went about setting up our tents, fully exhausted from the day’s nearly 9 mile journey.

I laid down for a short nap to try and recuperate, and soon enough we found ourselves at dinner time. Mike brought out a tiny deck of cards and we proceeded to re-learn how to play the game Hearts. We didn’t have access to the internet to double check rules, but we managed a few fun rounds before calling it a night.

Our out-dated weather forecast predicted thunderstorms overnight, and so we make sure all of our items were secure and our vestibules were zipped. For some reason I needed to pee multiple times this night and so I got a first-hand view of the weather as it rolled in over the lake. By midnight we were treated to some of the most incredible cloud-to-cloud lightning I’ve ever experienced. I ended up not getting much sleep because the constant flashing penetrated the mostly opaque tent fly. After a few hours the light and sound show subsided and I managed a few more hours of sound sleep under the sound of pattering rain before being awoken by the morning light.

This storm was the northern portion of a large system that caused a significant amount of damage hundreds of miles to the south and west. We were thankfully lucky to have missed the worst of it and apart from the light show and a bunch of rain, we came through unscathed. Well mostly… Mike and Beth unfortunately got some rain over their footprint and so they had some drying out to do.

One final note for day 2 was the pride that Mike and I have over the bear hang we did. We once again used the method of suspending a carabiner between two trees and hoisting up our bags into the middle of the hang. This one came out awesome, and I decided to commemorate it with a striking photo.

Next, we begin the first of two very short distance days, but with the longest portage of the trip.