Sunday, June 10, 2012 Hey! We slept in until 6:30! For the first time we had a fire cooked breakfast of pancakes and planned a short day trip through the end of Vern Lake into East Pipe and Pipe Lakes, then return through Homer and Whack Lakes returning, basically, back at our campsite.

The map showed we’d have a few short portages but on this gorgeous morning we were able to glide along until just before East Pipe Lake. We circled the lake and couldn’t help but notice the fire damage levels. The bigger island was noticeably different from the surrounding shoreline. There was no sign of tree life coming back, just a denuded looking island. We wondered if this was due to a hot spot in the fire that would have burned so hot that it would have burned out any organic matter in the soil??

Portaging up to Pipe Lake gave us a great little spot to over look East Pipe, have a snack break, and observe another good sized beaver dam. The wind was picking up again and we chose not to travel to the end of Pipe and check campsites. We backtracked through East Pipe into Homer Lake and back through Whack Lake. The Portage between them was waterlogged so we found some beaver cuttings and filled in the wet spots to make the portage easier. We’d be coming out that way in the morning with our gear so we made it a little better than it was.

The rest of the afternoon was a relaxing one enjoying the breeze and reading. The landing of the campsite has an enormous ant hill so I crushed up some peanuts and sesame sticks and scattered the pieces. Within a few hours the place was clean! Man, they had more energy than I did and it was neat to watch them work so hard. I suppose they have heard of leave no trace?

We went to bed to the sound of stronger wind and distant thunder. Too cloudy to see the sunset so we went to bed early and prepared to leave in the morning.