Day Five. I awoke to the same routine I always wake up to, with the sleeping bag stuffing and so on. But today, something was different. Unfortunately, it was not the quality of the light - we were in thicker fog than ever. This time, the cloud squatting on us was so heavy that the tents were soaking wet, as was the pebble beach. But even though I still couldn't see the view, I was hearing new sounds. There was a lot of commotion right next to my tent. First it came from the direction of Kevin's tent, which was maybe 2m downslope on the tiny beach. Then it came from just outside my vestibule, which was the driftwood kitchen I'd built. By the time I emerged to start the potty shovel part of my morning routine, Kevin's gear was all in drybags, the coffee water was boiling, and he was sponging down his tent fly. When I returned from my walk, his tent was put away, and he was chopping fruit for oatmeal. I didn't know what to make of this. After copying the sponging off the wetness part of his tent packing up routine (but not the part where he neatly folds the tent before putting it away. I stuff. They're called stuff sacks, not fold sacks) I plunked myself down in the kitchen.
Since I was usually the one who did the dishes and put the stove away and re-nested the pots and all that, this morning, I was trailing last with packing up! After pouting about the pokiness of our crew, at that. Not only that, but I had to go through my collection of rocks and do some culling, and now Jim and David were all packed up and ready to go and my gear was still scattered around my hatches! But David wanted to return to the spot where Kevin had landed his last fish to see if he could find some lost sunglasses and so he and Jim were off on a mission. Five minutes after they left, both Kevin and I were ready to launch. This we did, but we ended up drifting in the fog for some minutes before the others returned from a highly successful mission. David was the saviour of sunglasses on this expedition: he'd already re-attached the arm to mine after it snapped off (for no reason! especially not carelessness on my part) using the famous awl, and now he'd retrieved Kevin's from a watery resting spot. Me, I'm going to put a spare set into my first aid kit. You need sunglasses, even when it's foggy.
We started with a foggy, thus bearing-guided, crossing of Shesheeb Bay. We necessarily stayed close together. There was no fishing. On the other side, we had a quick potty break by Sail Rock. And for once, a quick break really was quick! I really wanted to stop at Agate Point, because I like agates. Turns out, a better place for that would have been Agate Cove, which I never did see because I'd beelined for the point so that I could have some extra time out of my boat looking at the rocks while Jim came the shoreline way around. Despite being devoid o agates, Agate Point was just gorgeous. David and I beached (actually, reefed) our boats and started wandering. There was a strong sense of ocean at low tide - it seemed like there were surge channels and tidepools. Jim, who soon joined us, discovered said mock tidepools 
with glee, because he told me to go away, he was going to take a bath. Superior water is cold, and this route has no rivers to swim in, so we were none of us the freshest at this point in the trip. When David heard Jim's intention, he scurried over the rocks to the bathtubs as well. What they seemingly didn't figure out was that sure, they could send me away, but they saw nothing odd about Kevin wandering over with his camera. And after the trip, Kevin dumped his camera on my computer. I, however, am a model of restraint and thus this page retains its usual decorum. That, and I really kind of like all of these guys and want to paddle with them again.
At this point, the fog had liften enough that we had 1-2km visibility at times. That was so cool, because now we saw the spectacular terrain. We stopped for lunch on a huge gravel bar (it would have made a decent, if exposed, campsite), and for a while there was talk of making it as far as St. Ignace Island to humour me and my itinerary stress. Thus, when the fog had moved back in and we pulled up parallel to a site on Fluor Island that was marked with a smiley, there was an awkward moment. Nobody wanted to say, let's stay here (probably because they were afraid of my pout). But man, it was just the 
nicest huge pebble beach ever, and looking at the map, it probably had an interesting view of the cute islands in front of it and we couldn't see it because of the fog. And it was mid-afternoon, and Kevin had not trailed a fishing line all day. It was really kind of silly, because we sat and nobody said, let's stay, but nobody made any move to go further either. Finally, I said, something about wanting to see this area without so much fog, and maybe tomorrow there wouldn't be any, why don't we just stay? And for once on this trip, *nobody* came out with a "maybe we also oughta consider" type comment. Nope. Within seconds, Jim had landed and staked out his spot at the north end of the beach. I think he was parked in his chair before David and I finished scoping the beach for the flattest area to take out! And when we found it, the first thing I saw was an agate! We took the time to pull out our boats, but for the next two hours, David and I sifted through rocks. It wasn't until after Kevin returned from fishing that we put up tents and built a kitchen and all that.
I *loved* this spot on Fluor Island. I could happily spend a week base-camped on this beach. Also, I loved the curry Kevin cooked that night. I loved how not-buggy it was (Kevin even did the fast and light tent set-up where you just put the fly up using the footprint, no inner tent), I loved the view the next morning (the fog lifted for a while!) I did not love that we did not have enough time to have a layover day here, but oh, I want to go back.
(to be continued)
Posted by Johanna at August 16, 2007 07:17 AM