Day 5: 30 miles

Up to this point I think we had gone about 60 miles for the trip.  We did 30 or so today.  We did 13 before lunch, another 16 across some lakes including Cass Lake by 2:00 and then planned on paddling another 7 miles to a site in the marshes between Cass Lake and Winnie.  It was another beautiful day until we got into the marshes.  That's when the wind picked up, the sun ducked behind the clouds, and we were struggling to find where the main channel went.  The marshes upriver (the ones everybody warned us about) hadn't given us too much trouble, but when we hit this section flashes of Phil's story of getting lost kept running through my mind.  We were fairly certain we were in the main channel and we knew that the site was on our right, but with how spread out the river was through wetlands we really couldn't tell where we were on the map.  Finally, we saw the site through the tall weeds.  The only problem was we couldn't get there.  We rounded a corner thinking we would find a channel.  No luck.  We rounded another corner.  No luck.  This went on for about 4 or 5 corners when we finally decided we would go back, find the thinnest section of weeds, and bulldoze the canoe through it to the other side.  On this mission we finally found a narrow (it was seriously just as wide as the canoe) opening with water running through it.  We slid through and finally made it to the site.  Now the only problem was that the site was overrun with garbage and didn't look like a very appetizing place to stay.  It was 5:45, but we decided to continue 5 miles to the banks of Winnie hoping for a better site.  We were rewarded with an amazing site right on the shore a couple hundred feet away from West Winnie Campground (we definitely took advantage of their nicer bathrooms). 
There we camped, on the banks of our most dreaded nemesis to date.