The girls let me sleep in until 9:15 am for my birthday today. When I woke up, they sang “Happy Birthday” to me. Today we paddled North on Kelso. The first campsite we saw was vacant. We decided to stop and check out all the vacant campsites we came across. I would argue that while there is not a single bad campsite in the boundary waters, some are certainly better than others. The second campsite further North was also vacant. Both of those sites were pretty awesome but we liked ours a bit better.
We had a hell of a time paddling back due to the wind. We tried to stay on the calmest side of the lake. Kelso itself is a very small lake that is not wide at all. We came up to a choke point in the lake. The lake gets narrow between a slightly wider section both before and after this choke point.
The wind was funneling into this choke point. We tried to paddle through it but we couldn’t. Our canoe had a tendency to stay out of the eye of the wind. So we seemed to tack back and forth between starboard and port fighting our way windward. I wasn’t sure what we were going to do. We pulled the canoe to the shore on one side to assess.
I debated trying to walk the canoe along the shore but it wasn’t my first choice. We made another attempt. Everyone was paddling with all their might. Annabelle normally doesn’t paddle all the time. But when she knows we need every bit of help we can get, she is happy lend her efforts. On our second attempt after our brief rest, I am glad to say we made it past that choke point.
We came home and swam for a bit. Dinner tonight was a bit earlier than usual. We ate spam and ramen. We split an astronaut mint ice cream sandwich for dessert. Our weather radio forecasted a storm. So we pumped water and had a brief fire before the storm. During the storm we played cards in the tent as it rained. The weather radio actually warned there was a possibility of tornadoes. Luckily they did not come to fruition. After the storm we had a second dinner. We ate cold rice and beans along with smoked salmon and granola.