Red Shirt Lake

We spent Friday evening packing our backpacks in preparation for the 3-mile hike the next day.

Woke up Saturday morning... Crap, it's raining!

I knew I forgot to check something.

Plan B: Unpack bags and repack with rain in mind. This essentially meant ditching the swimsuits and sunscreen and replacing them with towels, rain ponchos, and large black garbage bags. And off we went!

As it turned out, it stopped raining before we got to the Nancy Lakes Recreation Area, about 45 minutes from the house. It was raining when we woke up this morning, but again, it stopped just before we started the return canoe trip and didn't start up again until our return hike was completed. Perfect!

The hike each way was actually pretty pleasant. We were each laden down, but not ridiculously so. And upon further thought, we figured we'd brought pretty much what we needed without much extra or deficit.

The trail takes an up-and-down path through the woods with some nice vistas of distant lakes and hills.


The canoe journey across the lake was nice. It took us a little while to find the cabin on the far shore. But we had our GPS unit with us and after a while, remembered we had the coordinates for the cabin as well. So we did eventually find it!

It's a beautiful, peaceful spot. Absolutely no sign of other human life except the occasional small airplane flying over. Red Shirt Lake is large enough for floatplanes to use for landing and taking-off. There are a few private cabins on the lake along with the 4 public use cabins. There are also a few islands in the middle of the lake. Two of the PUC's are on islands. So if you want to feel like you have your own private island, you might rent one of those!


We roasted some marshmallows in the evening and played some cards. Then we went to bed around 10:30, after tacking up towels over some of the windows to block out the midnight sun. I got up around 12:20am to close the window and snapped a photo of a beautiful red sunset.

I'll add some additional photos to our Dropshots page which you can get to via the link on the side there.