Day 11: August 12, 2012

After breakfast today, we hiked straight to Lake Ojibway with all of our sanitized gear! We had to do a tiny bit of backwoods hiking, but not much- the hike wasn't bad at all compared to the other ones we've done. The lake looked really interesting at first glance, because the surface of a lot of the water was completely covered in a plant that I later found out was called Brasenia schreberii.

It was pretty much everywhere.

Brasenia has a male flower...

...and a female flower!

And it has its own natural "slime" type of stuff on the bottoms of its leaves. The tops are waxy!

Could be that the slime has spa-like properties? :P

There were still Nuphar plants scattered in there...

And some Nymphaea odorata  (top-white) and Utricularia (above-yellow)...

And a pitcher plant!!

But it was definitely mostly Brasenia.

Our first sampling station, before we started swimming through the Brasenia!

At first, I thought that it would be really fun compared to our other lakes- the leaves and flowers were so pretty, and walking through them felt really cool! However, as soon as we started needing to swim and gather samples, it wasn't so fun anymore. :P Our feet got tangled up in the floating vines, and it became hard to make any kind of progress in moving through the lake. But we figured it out eventually! It was also a pretty cold, dark lake since the leaves of the Brasenia covered the water, making it almost impossible for light to get through to the bottom. And to get sediment porewater samples, we had to first get our core sampler past the thick mat of stems on the bottom of the lake. It was certainly a challenge!!

All ready to go!!

Swimming through stems, stems, stems, and more stems! My face says a lot about how easy it was.

Water Column Sampling!!

Me with a species of Potamogeton!! :)

The sediment water sampling was tough!!

                                             

You can't really see the babies, but there's their momma!

We saw a moose with two babies on the other side of a small cove in the lake!! They were closer than the ones that we saw before in Moskey basin. So we've seen 5 moose in total now! Wow. :)

At one point in the lake, I looked down and saw leeches swarming around me like sharks around a shark tank. o_O Angela asked if I wanted the camera, but I said no. Didn't really feel like immortalizing that moment on film, hahaha. I'm a lot less frightened of lots of things after spending time on the island though! I'm not really too scared of spiders or yellow jackets anymore, and the fear of leeches is wearing off too! Look at how brave the island makes you. :)

Leeeeeeeeeeech

We also decided while swimming out of the lake that the four of us are superheroes. Angela is the Fearless Leader, Jennifer is Super Sass, I'm The Facemaker, and Rachel is... Batman. Seriously though. :P

Hiked back from Ojibway to Daisy, and we immediately loaded up the canoes and rowed back to Mott Island for processing! Even though we were tired, we knew that it would be worth it to get there as soon as we could, while the weather was relatively nice. After getting there safely, we filtered all of our water samples and treated ourselves to some s'mores! Delicious!! :D

Before going to bed, I found a leech on my sleeping bag! Not exactly sure how that happened, sine I had been out of the water for over 7 hours. But I got a video of him! The way that they move is pretty cool.

Hope that there are no more... o_O

Day 10: August 11, 2012

Hiked back from McArgo today!! It was a longer harder hike than the hike there, because we carried the boat back, as well as plant and water samples. After stopping for lunch, we basically continued without stopping! We made good time back, and sanitized before eating dinner.

Angela had the heaviest bag by far. We still don't know how she carried that thing- we could barely lift it!

We found another caterpillar and named him Rambo Jr.

Basically that was all that the day consisted of! Lots of hiking, and we're all exhausted. Gotta rest up before sampling Lake Ojibway tomorrow!

Day 9: August 10, 2012

Today, when we went backwoods hiking to get to the lake, we had to climb down some rocks. I grabbed onto a rock to steady myself, but it wasn't actually a rock, it was more of a cover for a yellow jacket nest.

o_O

My bug baffler baffled quite a few of them, but I got stung 11 times. Mainly on my right hand, where I reached right into the nest. Yowch! It sure made sampling the lake today interesting.

What a nice day. :)

Our underwater cameras got some very cool pictures!

Jenn and Rachel saw a moose!!

On the way back to McArgo after sampling, we had to do some minor climbing- and we looked awesome while doing it.

Don't mess with us, we're tough gals!!

We made it! These are our triumphant poses. :P

We stopped to check out the Minong Mines!! They were really interesting- we got some cool pictures, and had fun exploring for a bit. ^_^

There were some pits that people could wander into, like we did in the photos below.

"This isn't a mine, IT'S A TOMB!!!"

Well, okay it's more of a mine.

We also spent quite a while trying to find what was marked on the map as the Blacksmith's Shop. We found several small piles of metal and various tools, but no actual shop. We narrowed it down to one of the three locations below.

Which one of us is at the actual blacksmith's shop?!? No one will ever know!!

There were also several shafts that were completely underwater! We tossed a rock into this one, and it dropped pretty far until we couldn't see it anymore...

Once we got back, we filtered our water samples, preserved plants, and ate mashed potatoes for dinner (delicious!). Afterward, we snuggled up in our sleeping bags to get warm. Nothing better than getting comfortable after a long day. :)

Day 8: August 9, 2012

Getting up early this morning for our hike turned into... well...

...not getting up early.

How could we- we were so comfortable!!

When we originally woke up, it was pouring with rain outside of the shelter!! We were so thankful to have a roof over our heads, and we all drifted back to sleep, unwilling to get out of our warm sleeping bags.

When we got up, it had mostly stopped raining but was still sprinkling, and everything outside was soaking wet and cold. Another day when I couldn't have been more thankful for my Helly Hansen gear! Ate breakfast and got ready for the day, all while staying dry and warm, which gave me courage for the hike ahead, hahaha! (But seriously, I was in a much better mood knowing that the entire day wouldn't be damp and rainy- or at least that I wouldn't be! :D)

We're stayin' dry today!!

We Steri-Pen'd some water before we left too, of course!!

Ready to go!!

We stored some of our sanitation gear at Daisy Farm because we didn't have to sanitize until we came back. We also had the good fortune of some NPS staff being able to bring a bit of our gear up to the cove for us in a boat! Thank you all SO much!! I doubt we would've made the hike carrying that heavy turkey fryer and propane, and it was so much better without the boat!!

Jennifer found a little friend along the trail!!

Thanks Helly Hansen, for the phenomenal raincoats!!!

We went up to the scenic overlook again when we passed it and looked at Canada! It's such a beautiful spot, with one of the best views around. We ate lunch there, and watched an ant carry a crumb that was almost twice his size (we can sympathize you see, with the weight of our backpacks ;P)

Oh, Canada!!

Got to McArgo Cove around 5 pm, and after eating dinner it's pretty much off to bed. Sampling starts up again tomorrow!!

We made it!!