Friday morning was perfect! Hardly any wind, fantastic temperatures and a crystal clear bluebird sky. After breakfast and packing up the camp we took to the water and the short paddle across the lake. We hit the portage into Seagull Lake and crossed it in no time. Such is the advent of a depleted food pack. We had decided to hit the north side of the lake so our final day of paddling would be as easy as possible.

There was wind on Seagull Lake however. But it was not at all that strong and we cut through the waves easily. We zigzagged between the islands on the west side of the lake, stopping at a few sites to scope them out (and to take “shitter” pictures) before we lazily continued to the north side of the lake. We passed a few islands that are noteworthy due to them being nothing but huge boulders covered with seagull droppings. They looked so out of place; treeless, but not burned.

We finally reached the north side of the lake and proceeded to look for a campsite. We struck gold! The site we found, just north of Miles Island on the mainland, had a long, expansive beach and was sheltered on three sides from any wind. We threw our tents up, tossed a tarp on the ground and enjoyed a lunch of GORP, snacks and as many of the noodles, rice and mashed potatoes that we could eat (no point in carrying it out, right?). While we had our experiences with chipmunks and Gray Jays in the past, this site seemed like their haven.

While sitting on the ground we were visited first by a pair of Gray Jays who knew exactly what to do in order to elicit us to feed them. We spent an hour or so taking pictures of them perched in the trees, sitting on the ground and eating out of our hands when we noticed that some chipmunks had been viewing the spectacle from the sidelines and wanted in on the action.

Bold. Those chipmunks were obviously used to people feeding them. There where three of them but one was the adrenalin junkie of the group. He would climb onto the tarp between us and just sit there, stuffing his mouth with the GORP that we would place in a little pile. At one point I placed a few nuts in my hand and attempted to coax the little guy to climb up; which he did. It was really funny to see.

We went a step further though. We wanted to see how bold he really was so we placed a large zip-loc bag on the ground, put a few nuts in it, and baited it like a trap. It did not take long before he went for it! Once inside we quickly zipped him in. At first he was scared but upon noticing the food in the bag seemed not to care any more. He chilled out quite a bit and ended up being our “camp pet” for a few minutes. We let him out but he did not want to leave right away. All the free food he could want; who would want too?

Our games with the chipmunks and Gray Jays over (they got bored of us) Gopher and I decided to go for a swim as Matt took a quick nap. The beach sand of our bay was soft, shallow and warm. Gopher and I spent some time just outside of our bay stacking rocks on a boulder that was sticking just out of the water before he wanted to go fishing.

By this time Matt had woken up. I was not ready to be done swimming so, as Gopher headed off in the canoe to do some fishing, Matt and I continued to swim in the bay. Matt, at one point, stumbled on a large flat rock (about a foot across and less than an inch thick) which he discovered would skip like any other flat rock. Well, this certainly got our attention and we started throwing it at each other; skipping it across the water. We must have spent two hours just throwing that rock back and forth before Gopher came back with a few Bass.

That night we cooked up more noodles and rice and fried up the fish that Gopher had caught. The evening was great and we climbed up a hill beside the campsite to take full advantage of it. It was another night spent talking into the dark before we all decided to hit the tents.