I was awake at four for a nature run, and thought I’d just lie awake and listen to the birds at first light. The next thing I knew it was 6:30 and I was hurrying to photograph the last of the morning mist before it disappeared! I was very stiff and sore on this cool, damp morning and I requested a fire. Then I went out and photographed spider webs while he got the fire going.

Finally I returned and said “You’d better eat some leftover cake while you're working on the fire” and he replied, “I don’t feel like making the effort for a fire”.

So we had a late, but good, breakfast of potato pancakes, a 5-egg omelet with onion pieces hydrated in a little Nido milk, and bacon pieces. Our usual Tang, of course, and then we topped it all off with hot chocolate. While we were enjoying that cup, our friend “Chippy” discovered that he liked the potato pancake mixing bowl a great deal!

About mid-morning another white admiral stopped by to pose for me. This one seemed interested in tasting Neil’s dry camp shoes, and whatever flavor might be on the sheath for my Buck knife, the only item I can think of that has gone on every single trip with me since 1971.

We headed out in the late morning for a day trip, first going over to the rapids near our campsite that we could hear all of the time, then photographing our campsite from the water, and finally paddling down to the other end of the lake, checking out the other campsite as a lunch spot. It wasn’t at all friendly for landing from the lake (how DO people get into that campsite anyway??) and we decided to have our lunch on a rocky area along shore across from the campsite. I was having significant pain in my sciatic nerve, in my buttocks area and down the back of my leg, and it was particularly painful to sit in the canoe, even with my new Crazy Creek chair, so we realized that we were going to be cutting our day trip short from what we had planned.

Mama duck was present again, with her family, and she didn’t seem that agitated this time to have us around, so I got a better photo.

We checked out some pretty pitcher plants:

a dragonfly:

some fireweed:

and a turtle:

and headed back to our campsite. After a nap, we decided to use the water we had been warming in our fabric “kitchen sink” for a bath, and we got ourselves cleaned up and into some fresh clothes, which really felt good.

Our supper was a long-time favorite, the Mountain House Chili Mac. We also tried the Packit Gourmet California Strawberry Cheesecake and liked that a lot. It has a real cheesecake flavor, not like an instant pudding. Says it is one serving, but we found it adequate for two if you aren’t working really hard and have a good meal first. We always have an entrée and at least one veggie, so our dessert doesn’t need to be large. I had a packet of Trader Joe's freeze dried strawberries that I rehydrated to put over the cheesecake for extra fruit and it was very tasty.

The reflections were exceptional on this evening:

and the beaver made her appearance right on time:

We had a marginally good sunset view this evening. Nothing breathtaking, but the only one of the trip worth photographing at all. This just wasn’t a sunrise-sunset excursion.