I worked out with Lori on the deck while we were underway. It was refreshing to workout with the breeze cooling us down.
It was just a short trip before we anchored at Bad River. There were 3 boats that were tied to the rock on their port sides and this was the first time we saw that in-person, despite seeing it online. It is quite the interesting concept. Ben said he wouldn't do that because if the shape of our hulls.
Our plan for the day entailed anchoring and taking a tender ride through the Bad or French River rapids. Once we were anchored, everyone loaded into the Chicken. Ben grabbed our handheld VHF radio and turned Navionics on, on his phone, and we were on our way. The first opening we found was a rapids section coming down, so we turned around and went a different way so that we could attempt to come down that rapids section at the end of our rapids experience.
We backtracked through the channel we just came through and found a handful of houses backing to the river. We ventured up that river, hoping to get to the backside of the rapids section we just saw.
There were several sections of the river where there were whirlpools everywhere. The kids got a kick out of how many there were.
As we got further through the river, we came to a large rapids area where the current was definitely not in our favor. Ben got as close as he could and then turned the motor to full speed while everyone else was trying to make sure the prop and bottom wouldn't touch. It looked like we weren't moving, but we were slowly making progress. I think it took us about 4 minutes to navigate up it.
After that, we were in a better section of the river, with several different chutes- some were smooth and others were big drops with rapids. I swear, every time we came to one, Ben and Moose were gung-ho about going up it and everyone else had to convince them it wasn't a good idea.
Ultimately, every calm chute we went up ended in a non-navigatable rapids section and we turned back. The original rapids were visible once again, and we intended on going that way to the basin where the Cartermaran was, but also debated going down where we floored it through the rapids on the way in.
As we got closer, a small boat was coming up behind us. We talked to 2 locals in it and confirmed that we would be ok going down where we wanted to. They said it was called Devil's Door, and before we set out on this adventure, I said we could do any of the other ones that sounded more calm, but that I didn't want to do Devil's Door. It actually seemed the calmest of the options, so Roo, Bear, and I hunkered down at the bottom of the tender while everyone else rearranged themselves a bit on the edges, and we came down Devil's Door. It was fun and people barely got wet!
Once we made it back to the Cartermaran, we loaded up, pulled the anchor, saw that Soul Shine anchored while we were out, and we moved on towards Collins Inlet.
There were beautiful rocks along the sides of the islands near the channel and that mixed with the colors of trees, blue skies, and water. It was so picturesque. The channel was narrow in parts, but nothing compared to a few days ago at Hangdog.
We anchored in Mill Lake. The kids fished (Moose caught a crawfish!) and the adults napped.
After dinner, the kids, Lori, and Ben went on another Chicken ride to pick blueberries, which was very lucrative.
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