The day dawned warm & quickly turned uncomfortably muggy. By 8:30AM we were all in the cool waters of Wind Lake. Ahhhhh.

A day trip was in order, & Washte Lake to the south seemed perfect. Paddling across Wind, it wasn’t too tough to find the old portage, which wasn’t on our most recent maps. A quick hop & we were on Washte, a nice if non-descript lake. Hoping to have an early lunch on the island, we were disappointed that it didn’t even have a place to land, much less eat. We pulled up & stood around in the shallows, girls cavorting, & munched & drank. The water felt good, & shade would have felt even better! It was about then the flies came out. Millions of them. One could not cease moving for more than ten seconds before a fly was biting any exposed skin. This led our younger daughter, Leah, to begin doing the “bug-go-away” dance. The flies did not seem the least bothered by the stiff breeze that sprang up as we paddled back to camp, either.

We spent the early afternoon fishing, swimming, & trying to keep free of flies & heat. I had a big pike hit a smallmouth alongside the canoe – a bit of canoe country fun I’d read of but never actually seen! And later I went out in the swirling winds by myself & managed to knock my paddle overboard while landing a pike, & had a moment of panic: out of shouting range, in 15+ MPH winds, my paddle having floated several feet away. By getting low & paddling madly with my hands, I managed to grab the paddle. My heart is thumping, months afterwards, just thinking about it. Idiot!

Just before dusk we took the girls on a circuit of the big island we were on, through shallows, lily pads, bays, & a magnificent sunset. They were enthusiastic about everything. A late evening dinner of pasta was followed by the traditional dash to escape the bloodthirsty bane of canoe country.