Day 7
McIntosh Lake
Timberwolf Lake
Misty Lake
Little Misty Lake

approx. 8.5 Miles
1475 meters portaging

Sometime during the night I woke to the sound of thunder. This went on till it rain a little. Not sure how long it rained since I was dozing in and out. I slept in later than normal today and didn't crawl out of the tent till almost 7:00.

Went ahead and did the normal for me in the morning and got the fire and water started. It was cloudy today with a breeze but I couldn't tell if it was going to rain or not. After breakfast we packed up and headed for timberwolf. The lake had a good chop since the wind was blowing.

We found our way to the 1st portage. Timberwolf was a smaller lake similar to McIntosh but the wind seemed to be blowing harder and the waves where bigger. We tried some trolling but Matt got hung up good and snapped his line. The waves where just to big so we headed for the shoreline to hopefully find some calmer water.

We ended up paddling all the way around timberwolf. We found a campsite near the end of timberwolf where it narrows down to a river. We had some lunch and spotted a couple more paddlers. We had decided to take the back way into Misty and bypass the longer 780 meter portage to go for the shorter 120 meter portage but this added distance on the water.

Once through with the short portage we found ourselves on Misty. The lake seemed to have different tree's than what we have viewed on the past lakes farther to the east. The landscape also looked better suited for wildlife.

We paddled all the way down the lake with a headwind. This slowed our progress quite a bit. Misty was a nice lake from what we could tell it had plenty of diversity. But since we are closer to civilization we also started spotting more and more people. Our goal had been to see nobody or very few people on our trip. So far we had been pretty successful with this goal. We had modified our trip plans a couple days back. Today's plans are to hopefully get the only campsite on little misty lake. The bad part was the long portage to little misty. If the campsite was taken our only option was to push a couple hours forward to the next campsite or backtrack to misty where there are more campsites.

We did the 935 meter portage in a single carry. My impromptu pads are doing the trick and my shoulders are not sore like before. I also think we both have gotten more into shape for the portages and paddling. The only thing that did not change are the bugs. They still seemed to be bad on the portages. The end of the portage was slightly down hill and muddy. I slipped and fell carrying the canoe. This hurt my leg and back. I got back up and finished the portage.

We loaded back up and headed down the lake for the campsite. It was still cloudy and we had a headwind. The wind has been bad today and really gave us a workout paddling and keeping the canoe going straight. We found the camp empty and where happy since. Neither of us wanted to push farther or turn around.

This camp had some blown down trees that where partially cleared away. One big tree had fallen on the fire pit and was laying directly next to it. There was only 1 flat spot good for a tent next to the trail leading to the thunder box. It was late so I set up the tent while Matt got a fire started for dinner.

We liked this lake. It was small and narrow and we are the only ones here. There was a rock on edge next to the lake that we ate dinner on. We sat in silence just staring out and enjoying our last night in Algonquin. Then we both started reflecting on our trip the good and the bad. We both agreed that our 1st 5-days where the best. Mainly because we did not see or run into anybody. The closer we get back to the access point the more people we are seeing.

We both hope that someday we will be able to visit the park again. These past 7-days have gone by way to fast.

Later on I needed to filter some water so I sat down on the rock and tossed the end of the filter in the water and started pumping. I was watching the fish and just staring out when out of the corner of my eye I spotted something big in the water. I jerked back to find a big snapper trying to go after my filter in the water. This guy really wanted my filter. He stayed around for a long time. It was funny to hear him breath out of his nose.

It was about dusk when we went on a short hike to look around. We found a large group of trees on the edge of the lake that all blew down together. Their roots are all intermingled together and looked neat. We noticed again the tree's are different here. We ended up finding a really big pine. Matt couldn't even reach half way around the tree at the base. Plus it looked taller than anything else around. This must have been a really old tree. But I thought this whole area was logged out years ago.

It was getting dark so we sat around the fire and reflected on our trip more before we went to bed. We planned to get an early start the next day.