Friday, July 19, 2019 Thanks to Dobby's vomit fest, we woke to the most gorgeous sunrise view from our large screen window. We felt no rush to get out of those cozy sleeping bags so we chilled for a good long while in the tent. Today was going to be another lazy day of fishing, swimming, and relaxing.
Foregoing an early breakfast, I made us each a mug of coffee and we hit the water early to try our hand at some fishing on Finger Lake. The morning was cooler than it had been so we had to bundle up a bit. Finger Lake is a gorgeous lake, full of nooks and crannies. We didn't have much luck fishing other than a lost lure to some behemoth in the deep, a fishing story we can't tell because it never happened. The only fishing story worth telling on our morning bobbing under blue skies was this monster Krystal reeled in right before we headed back to camp. World record fish!

I was feeling restless with our downtime at camp so I took it upon myself to fish from shore, my feet in flipflops cooling in the water. I cast one time and snagged on a tree below the surface. There were some boulders along shore that I had to navigate to get my snag free. I got it free and as I was climbing back to the landing, my foot slipped off a fairly jagged rock and I sliced the bottom of my foot wide open. Krystal, a former EMT and super handy to have around in an emergency, bandaged me up water tight. Needless to say, after this trip, we moved to Crocs for camp shoes. No more foot slices for me!
I said enough of fishing from shore after the bandage job was completed, and we headed back in the canoes to see what we could find. As we were paddling parallel to our little island, Krystal spotted another wee baby hawk of some sort perched on a rock. This little fella would still be on that rock when we left the next day too. We wondered how he or she had gotten down there and what exactly would happen to them. There could have easily been an adult feeding it on the ground as a fledgling, but we worried about the little thing for a while.

Not wanting to upset the tiny hawk, we paddled on after a few photos to find a fishing spot. There was a nice weedy bed off the far eastern edge of the island so we fished that for a good while. We got into some tiny bass and the occasional small pike. They were all fun to catch but not of size enough to keep for dinner. With grumbling stomachs, we headed back to camp and made the worst meal of our trip. It was a disgusting dehydrated Chicken Ala King. We could barely stomach it, but the dogs were happy, as they ended up eating the majority of that meal.
The evening idled away. We brought the maps out and discussed the move on our next day. And as we were on Finger Lake, we could not help reminiscing about the three years we lived in Upstate New York in the Finger Lakes area and exploring that regions astounding beauty. I think that commonality between a place we loved in New York and where we were currently sitting made us love this little Finger Lake even more. We watched as the sun painted the cliffs across from the site with a pink hue, memories of New York setting in our minds, and we finally retired for an early bedtime.