Annihilated by BUGS and Chased by Fire in the Wilderness

I got lit up today. They were getting in my bug net. I only wore my bug net for the second time today. They were getting inside it, getting through the holes I think too. Swarming like crazy. I set up my tent at that spot I just pulled over. So much for spending two nights at a site. I'm not spending two nights here. It's only two kilometers away from where I wanted to be. It's just I can't paddle and it's not safe at all. It was sketchy. I was happy to get back to land. Over a 12 hour day, 13 hour day, 13 and a half hour day if you count until right now of travel. Stopped for about a half an hour for chili. Just a horrible, horrible bug experience today. Biggest day, hardest day in a bunch of different ways, but I need to take a Benadryl now because I don't do well when I get overwhelmed with bug, black fly bites, I get this black fly fever thing and I can kind of feel the fatigue starting in, but it might be just me being tired from all day type thing so I'm not going for a day at all it's over that site and that's it I think I can feel them feel the weights I feel like moving today I want to get out of here in about a half an hour 630 now head back to that rapid and first portage there and that's all I have as far as portaging the whole day and I want to get into big lake that's nice and I don't want to be paddling in the big lake at a time of day where the wind kicks up kind of hurry up this morning has been circling me it's a red-tailed hawk can't even take my eyes off this canoe for a second man any at least I was able to get it without going fully in the water only half this hawk just don't care about me I wasn't I didn't stop before he started like I was paddling he started doing I pulled over to get my camera and my rain jacket because it's something's happening something's gonna happen ha ha you know in movies when you hear the a bald eagle scream like that it's not a bald eagle it's a red-tailed hawk the bald eagle sounds more like a cackling type thing um not as epic is that they both sound very cool to me got a big daddy chocolate chunk cookie for breakfast all is well in the world vibe today man it's clouding up this is just the whole sky is clouding over it it's a beautiful morning yeah i think i'll go paddle for a while smile have fun on a nice morning this is where I was casting from last night just so shallow the winds of change are coming the ---- winds are coming the weather is going to change no question so I'm going to get a move on but I do want to try my hand just one cast, two casts I put a jig on with this chartreuse it looks tasty when I put it in the water I would grab it and eat it so let's Let's see what happens. Hopefully I'm in the right spot. I'm losing jig heads. I've only got heavy ones left now two casts Two snags. I was able to get the first one up. All right Let's see about the second one and I'm out of here if that's the case that I'm out of here I'm paddling in a burn right now. Oh, it's exposed rock You can see the burns from 2015. So these young trees you see are under 10 years old it would take them a couple years to even start to pump up. Got the wind up my back, it's a good day to travel. I'm gonna put as much distance as I can between me and my last camp. Which is okay, I've been pretty lucky with the weather overall. Yep, good idea, taking out the jacket, put my big camera away now and just get prepared for a wet day. pictographs The cool little spot here between all these islands those rock looks really nice The birch trees get depressing after a while, but that's only after a few days in it It's so fitting paddling through this burn on a dreary rainy day like this This is a all-day rain like I'm gonna paddle all day in this rain type of rain all day Okay, I think I bit last night. There's mosquitoes in my sand I think right on under my eyelid or something like that because it's all swollen up pretty good Not too bad. I can handle it and the rain feels good on it Some folks call the cars a blade, I call this thing a blade What a day You saw last after you saw me last the rain really picked up and it rained for half the day It's four o'clock now 430. I got here at 4. I left at 10 after 7 this morning That's nine hour day. You see my eye? It's closing, not closing anymore, but swelled up quite a bit When I looked down, all I can see is I must have got it in my sleep. But anyways, switched it up. I didn't go the normal route. The normal route I was sending, I had two options. I could go the normal route that I'm used to and that I had gone prior. I was there a month ago with Brent. Or I could go north to Bruce's secret route. And it puts me out in the same spot after like in two days or something. So I decided to go north. So then I did have some portaging. But it is beautiful out here. I came to this site. I traveled so very far to get to this site because it said WC on the map world-class Now there's blueberry plants everywhere out here, and there's a bunch of blueberries But they're mostly purple as you can see from underneath here, but look at one two Got a little score. Oh, it's a little mushy quite mushy But yeah, look at like this is the first blueberries of the year right here at least in this area there's ripe ones score man just in this one spot it must just because because of the direction the sun and everything when it's facing that's all right that's good that's good in there a little tart which is my favorite hopefully in a week or so we everywhere i can just gorge myself i'm gonna eat supper and go to bed i'm i'm just pooped it's been a long day oh i saw a caribou i paddled through some really really pretty spots coming up north the way bruce mentioned and uh i saw a caribou swimming in the water in front of me I didn't want to bother it so I didn't pull out my camera and try and chase it down or anything I just let it be I didn't only have my GoPro it would have been a speck very cool saw a bear the other day too and he didn't even see me just walking on the shore morning of day 10 it is a gloomy day black flies are out in full force today there's actually one crawling on my GoPro as I'm talking to it that WC world-class site was at best a 4 out of 10 in my opinion but it could i think the ratings have a lot to do with situational dependence the situational dependence it's like if you had a really bad day you get here and it's the sun comes out it's catching a lot of fish and easy sleep and stuff yeah it's a world-class site but if you had a good day you come here and it turns all nasty it's not i had both and uh even though there's blueberries it was still only like a three or four out of ten, no worries that was the worst campsite i had so far and this is day 10 so that's pretty good and it was still a decent site today portaging and paddling different from the other days i'm gonna to probably get to a site tonight like a decent site i thought this was going to be last night and spend two nights i wanted to spend two nights at a good site uh pretty soon just to catch up on sleep and catch up on writing and rest and uh so that i can push it for the rest of the trip so maybe that'll be tonight i'll try to hopefully find a nice big open site that's that's what i tend to like the best and i don't feel claustrophobic at a site it's a nice big open site i can stretch out i can dry out my stuff and i can swim like the site two nights ago there was no bugs basically it was black it was deer flies for the most part and this thing was like very very very bad with black flies and And it was windy, they're still on me. So that's the worst of both worlds, windy and black flies. Listen to me complain, listen to me complain. I'm having a very good job. I'm having a very good time, I'm doing a very good job writing the book, and I'm feeling good. Texted my mommy yesterday, told her I loved her. She texted back later on, oh, you made my day. So I'm happy with that, very happy with that. I think I'll go out on this side too now. My eyes are taking the brunt of it. The beautiful blue eyes. looking for a portage impenetrable jungle the secret lakes aren't used much which is nice but it also means the portages aren't used and hard to find usually in decent shape though just gotta find them probably gonna be back tucked in this little bay here oh I see a blaze I think most of them haven't even had blazes on the tree but if this one is exactly where we think it would be in this little bay like I was saying closest even if you can save two or three steps they're gonna make it as long as it's not over a hill yep this is it I can see blazes through the trees boom boom boom I already carried my heavier load make sure I didn't leave anything there I already carried my heavier load and this portage is a doozy so I'm gonna film parts of it for you because it's uh worthy of it you know there we go thread the needle joe thread the needle so where's the trail at right like where would you go you look for squashed old pieces of wood on the ground and remnants of something where somebody once walked long time ago and do you see a trail here I kind of do In the clear for a second here Nice Cool There's smell a little bit of smoke in the air maybe huh that's new freaking bugs bud that was not that enjoyable worst black flies of the trip actually black flies and mosquitoes but the black flies are really really really bad today and these little lakes I want to be looking forward to a big nice open lake with wind freaking bugs are nuts man what the heck this is the only only the second time i've put the bug net on this whole trip but there's so many that they're inside it i couldn't even get it on without trapping some in there i'm just stuck trying to smush them through the mesh but this is freaking bad really really really bad bring on a big lake sun's trying to come out so far i've done four little portages carryovers some are just leftovers walking through water um yeah it's been a with all the gear the two packs and like the extra amount of stuff whatever it is a bit of work And these black flies like I've said are just incessant here now I lost my glasses earlier today and my sunglasses before it got bright, not obviously Not on purpose. It's just trying to get the bugs away like that and they were on my hat It's not the first time that's happened So I think for the future as light as they are a secondary pair of sunglasses Polarized too because I need to be able to see the rocks underneath the water when I'm paddling by and stuff that's that's a big one um i never used to wear them and it makes a huge difference but and if whatever just for the sun and fishing but the rocks are the biggest thing now that the sun's out it's really dawned on me how important they are um a thing of floaties on the back of it and a secondary pair just cheap i only ever buy gas station some 20 dollar gas station sunglasses so whenever i see if they're polarized or that that's a win for me if they feel all right see see i'm in the middle i'm in the middle of the lake and uh i couldn't see that at all when it comes to running a little bit of rapids i'm doing and stuff they've come really really good and really in handy a lot they've come in handy a whole bunch but i've been running the little rapids and uh i'm going down to the Kopka and there's a bunch down there anyways i miss them and lesson learned two pairs and a pair of floaties on them on the back i have one more shitty portage to do and then i am hopefully out onto the big lakes i'm done with this little lake in and out buggy nonsense it's pretty but i don't even care i want open air i want a breeze i don't want bugs i'm done with the bugs now for a bit um and i want to be able to swim without having to cover up right away and so we'll see let's go find a big site on a big lake my temples just got destroyed on both sides of them um anyway i can see smoke in front it's all hazy i can smell it certainly now i thought i could earlier but certainly can smell it now and uh i'm sure it's fine last month i was here and me and kyle kyle and i couldn't see 100 yards in front of us and it was totally fine it was from a long long distance away wind just blew it in but i do want to just make sure with the outfitter you know i want to be able to make it home to my lovely girls regardless so i just want to make sure i'm i'm not paddling into it or that i should be aware of anything and uh i'm sure it'll be fine i'll let you guys know what he says i've been keeping my i'm so stupid i'm so stupid for not doing this all the time on these big wilderness trips keep it in my pocket now you know it's not a big uh hassle in the pocket and you need it you need it with you at all times i should have got the in the inreach mini never used to bring my phone now i do and i have both it's all good but I'm going to text him now. Paddling by I thought I heard rapids so I came on over to check it out. Look at this. Maybe a spring but it's furious how it's flowing. Look at that view. It's getting smokier by the minute here. Hoping to get a response soon. Seeing stuff like this would be handy to have the glasses. There's a rock poking out. Some more right here. Can I make it? Can I make it through? I need to get out of the boat. portage that i didn't see on the map and now we are paddling very close up into this little mess thing it's just i don't know what to look for see the water on the other side i just gotta get to it a jumbled mess right there that cut log the cut log and that grass a nice lawn right there that's the way to go no let's go through the jumbled mess joe jerk ass joe strikes again portage is done now good news I got a text back within five minutes and Bruce said what I texted him was it's pretty smoky am I okay he texts back fire is very far away you're very okay exclamation mark so I'm happy to hear that I just put perfect and we won't give it a second thought, a little stress off my mind though because I was like I just wanted to know you know I just wanted to know how I do really I really, really want to go home with my family, I swear. It might seem like I'm out here all the time, but this is the minimal part of my life that you see. The most is at home with my kids and my wife and my doggies and my neighbors and my cats and my frogs and my bearded dragon. Finally, I'm out on a big lake, but it's not gonna last long going back up another creek here. But I'm gonna pull over and have a hot lunch today on the island. Wish I had my sunglasses. Got as much wind block as I can Using this old fire pit with my stove, plug stove. Propane stove inside of it. For no reason other than it's midday and it's too windy to start a fire here. I'm having chili for lunch. First hot lunch of the trip, day 10. The lunch meat, I have one pack left and it's a bit dicey. I packed some smaller than normal meals just for lunches. Slow amounts of water. That's not, don't overdo it. You can always add more. You can always add more. oh that smells so good, I'll tell you more, it'll always soak up a little bit more than you think but you don't want to make everything soup it's the Parmesan, just what the doctor ordered a little lunch break uh might have to be a snack or a staple every day stopping for lunch beautiful i did say i wanted a big lake and wind right a big lake and wind to get rid of the mosquitoes and black flies i've been paddling up this into a headwind for it's got to be two hours now we're going on nine oh it's past now it's nine hours again nine hour travel day i'm thinking i want to do three more portages and get over to the campsite that Kyle and i stayed at last month portage i'm getting lit up by black flies my face is just welts i have one more to do i'm hoping it's uh pretty straightforward okay is this not a portage what the heck man i'm so done it's been like 10 hours it's in an inopportune spot who put that rock there who put that right there and that's not even the portage and uh deepest i thought it was i caught up kyle and i last month but evidently not yet because this portage portage is not used it's all overgrown for our trees but uh i saw the end and that is the lake i'm gonna be camped on and thank god because i need to take a benadryl soak my face and take a rest day because these black flies have gotten me really bad today i honestly don't know what's worse i don't know what's worse having this head nut on or not having it on they find their way in there like crazy like a lot of them and they're trapped in there just biting me but having it off sorry about the camera having it off is not great either oh my god i'm all welted up like crazy i gotta go gotta go right down the pipe into the wind for quite a ways and i'm at camp staying there for two nights so it's gonna be worth it hopefully choppy oh it's just white caps everywhere it's just throwing me around like crazy careful what you wish for i can't even stay here it's so windy but i can't camp here because i'm worried about these trees toppling over on top of me it's all lumpy um but the bugs are so bad even with how windy it is bugs are incessant i'm trying to even just write and i can't i can't take any more i gotta get to a camp and get in my tent uh i'm gonna head out into the wind i think i'm only about 2k away from the the camp i want to be at there's nothing closer else i just go there but I gotta go. Freaking bugs. I don't think this is very good. There's some big rollers and someone can turn the boat man. I'm gonna pull up here. This is gonna have to be camp regardless. It's uh 8 45. I just got my tent up now. Look at my face. I got lit up today. They're getting in my bug net. I was only I only wore my bug net for the first second time today. They're getting inside getting through the holes I think to swarming like crazy see I'm here I set up my tent at that spot I just pulled over so much for spending two nights at a site I'm not spending two nights here maybe it's only two kilometers away from where I wanted to be it's just I can't paddle and it's not safe at all it was sketchy yet I was happy to get back to land anyway over 12 hour day 13 hour day 13 and a half hour day if you count right until right now of travel stopped for about a half an hour from Chile I just just a horrible horrible bug experience today biggest day hardest day in a bunch of different ways but I need to take a Benadryl now because I don't do well when I get overwhelmed with bug black fly bites I get this black fly fever thing and I can kind of feel the fatigue starting in but it might be just me being tired from all day type thing so I'll probably get up from here tomorrow and just paddle two kilometers that other site and set up there and it'll be just like a rest day anyways two kilometers there's nothing no portage or nothing and then uh take it easy tomorrow that was my face i haven't looked at it yet but i can feel it it was very lumpy and puffy i slept hard i slept real hard last night it's like 6 a.m now almost six i'm not going far today at all i'm just over that site and That's it. I think I can feel them, feel the blades. Because I'm not going far, it's only 2K down the way and I want a rest day, I'm gonna leave now before breakfast. It's only 6.05, so yeah. I can't, I just, I can't be bit again today, so I need to be there early and in my tent because the bugs are already starting to come out. Much calmer than yesterday, but she's picking up for this early. All packed up, ready to go somewhere less buggy. I'm hoping that because the camp I wanna go to is on an island, not the mainland like this, the bugs won't be there. We'll see. I've had really good luck for 10 days. Today's 11, today's day 11. Just horrible yesterday, horrible today. Bring back the other days. Quite a different vibe than last night. The wind didn't even actually die down until after 10 when I went to bed. It was still howling when I fell asleep. That Benadryl might have knocked me out because that was a really, really hard sleep. There she be, that's my island, Stonehenge. Stayed there last month with Kyle, and I stayed there on my first trip ever to Wabakimi. I know it well, I'm excited to be there. Just a nickname for it, but that's what it's called. Breeze and Bruce calls it Stonehenge. There's one more pile of them here, a couple more. It's just a really nice site. This here too, last month when I was here, maybe like three weeks ago, whatever, with Kyle, there's a bear bell, like a dog bear bell sitting right here. I looked around, I don't see it on the ground or anything like that. Somebody has been here since we've been here. It took me a little bit longer than I thought to get here, about an hour instead of a half an hour, so I think I was about four clicks away, roughly. It's incredible, though, the amount of difference in the bugs. There's some moths flying around, maybe a mosquito or two, but I was getting hammered by black flies early this morning, maybe two hours ago, not even. Two kilometers away, four kilometers away. It really depends on where you are and how the bugs are doing, how they're feeling, I guess, how hot it is. 10 days for me to get this dinged up, it's crazy. Yesterday or the day before, I got soaked and I didn't know my orange slog bag, red slog bag had a hole in the bottom from being used for many, many years. Just abraded it a little bit and it soaked up a bunch of water inside. A lot of food got wet. Thank God they were all in their own bags and stuff. This one was not, it was just thrown in there. It's a happy act, Spanish scrambled eggs. It got all soaking wet, so I felt like I needed to eat it yesterday. But I opened it today, and to my surprise, there's like, it's like, mylar-lined, obviously, like tinfoil-lined type thing, metal, and it's all still dry as a bone. But it's open, and I wanna eat it. We need 150 mils of water, and then you fry it up in the frying pan. Duh! And it's got measurements on it, so that's what we're gonna do. I thought I brought two B-Freeze, these water filters, and I did not. only brought one she's still going all right though, probably a hundred and fifty, I'm not gonna put a full 150, that's that's already too wet that's way too wet, the smoke generator gets rid of bugs and get your cookings going, I don't know if I showed you guys how this works, a little nut unscrews a bit, slides down in, it's got a great locking mechanism, it's not going to come off on you, here we go to go the flattest spot for it just a little touch of oil in there, I'm so hungry this is breakfast, this is a late breakfast for me out here, I haven't even stoked this twig stove at all oh ----, we'll char it up, we'll make them into scrambled, mix it all in together, I should have flipped it quicker, dang, it was only on there for a second, that's all right, I don't mind the crispy parts, personally I like the crispy bits as I've mentioned before a hundred times, as I've also mentioned these, combo man this pan and this twig stove, the Ganesha twig stove project. twig stove and the Hagawa frying pan Skills together. That was literally just a handful of twigs. I didn't even soak it. It might look like all my stuff's everywhere because it is. I'm drying it out. My food and stuff got a little bit wet and it's a perfect time. This is very comfortable here. I could sit out and right outside of my tent here. I could just sit. Like this is like a few days ago where i was able to swim and sit around naked basically all day this is what i've been waiting for for a couple days i was expecting this two nights ago at the world class site i was expecting to stay there and have this time rejuvenation time organization time writing time and uh it was just hectic for two days so nine hour day that day the 12 hour day yesterday there's no question i'm certainly taking a rest day here today even though i had to paddle to get here it only took an hour this is a rest day tomorrow a couple nights i looked at my notes and i have a very nice campsite coming up that i'd like to stay at not too far from here so it'll be a couple easier days tomorrow there's some portaging but it only should only be like a five hour travel day type thing as opposed to six or nine or twelve i hope my face gets better but either way it's not affecting my health i'm fine this week on camping with joe drying your clothes What a novel idea. I've worn out three pens so far. This book is almost done. A tripper. I am hot. I'm very, very, very, very warm. Obviously. I still have my long... My long, long, long... I gotta let some air out of my sleeping pad. Explode. But uh... It's time to go for a swim. I did this on purpose. I came in here. Wanted to ride in here. Use this like a sauna. I wanna go jump in the lake now. But uh... I feel good to... To jump right in and get my face cold. The bug bites will... There's no... There's no black flies here. but there's tons of ants in my tent i'll take ants out over black flies every single day of the week all the time lovely that's a proper man stew a yak is right i never liked them they always look so good on the picture i never liked them it's the first time i tried the beef stew i won't get it again also the omelette this morning wasn't because i burnt it see that it's showing up right is very close i've never seen it like that before all the smoke i've ever seen has been coming in in the air the color of the sky and stuff that's billowing it's billowing right there where it's coming over that changes the vibe right before i'm about to go to bed