Neil was suddenly awake at 5 AM when he heard a moose walking across the rock right outside our tent door! Of course it was gone before we could react and open the flap! We know it was there, as we could see tracks in the mud! Now my hopes were REALLY up!!

There was a heavy mist on the lake at 5:30, and if I looked closely I could see a couple of ducks, but we never had any loons on Cross Bay Lake. We missed seeing and hearing them.

We had a breakfast of pecan pancakes, scrambled fresh eggs with bacon, and Tang, and discussed plans for the remainder of the trip. We decided to base camp on Cross Bay Lake for a few days, do some day trips, and take no more portages except for the three necessary for getting back out to the entry point on Day 7 or 8.

It was a calm, overcast morning at 7:30 with birds singing and the sun burning off the fog. A red squirrel scolded us, but didn’t drop by for a visit. Later in the morning Mama duck brought her family around for little while:

The chipmunk(s) checked us out after every meal, grabbing up any crumbs we might have dropped. We keep a clean camp, but of course it is impossible not to drop even a crumb, so the little creatures seemed to find tidbits. They also had chewed a hole in the trash bag. We were going to need to be very vigilant.

At 9:30 Neil got up after a nap and put up a tarp (there was a bit of nagging to get this activity going, but I was glad for it when it started to sprinkle just as the tarp was basically in place.) The weather was turning damp and cool, with no wind, and we suspected a period of drizzle. But as it turned out we had steady rain until after 3:30. We had our usual snack-type lunch under the tarp, and spent the afternoon alternately going out to watch groups on the portage, and reading our paperback books. I baked a cake in the Jello-mold oven. The first time I have used it on the stove and it was fairly successful.

Supper was cheese tortellini with homemade spaghetti sauce that I made from freeze-dried veggies and tomato powder from Packit Gourmet. It turned out really tasty. We had a nice sunny interlude from about 4 until 7:30 but by 8 o’clock it was cloudy and humid again.

The beaver started to swim by a little after 8 and I made the mistake of photographing without remembering to turn off the automatic flash, so as soon as that happened, she turned around and went back to the lodge.

It was 9 PM before she got up enough nerve to try a second trip.

There wasn’t a nice sunset to photograph, and the mosquitoes drove us in to the tent about 9:30.