Slept late today…nowhere to be! It also happened to be our 13th anniversary. Eleven out of 13 anniversaries have been spent in the BWCA. I missed 2003, the year that Audrey was born, so Dave took his dad, brother and nephews along. In 2009, my broken leg prevented us from making the trip.

A good part of the morning was spent lounging on the giant rock in our campsite. Audrey was quite the butterfly magnet; they kept flying around her and landing on her shoe, then her shoulder and finally her finger. She was also visited by a gigantic, 5 inch long roly-poly green caterpillar with red dots evenly spaced around its body.

Out on the water, our afternoon fishing exploits were not rewarded. We talked with other anglers who mentioned the previous two days had been good, but not so much today. We ate lunch in the canoe before returning to camp to swim in the landing area. Audrey and I went back to lounging in camp, while Dave put a large rock in the front of the canoe and went out to the reef by himself to continue fishing and snorkeling. No treasures or fish were found. The hammock was strung up for Audrey so she could nap and read a book. A hummingbird buzzed around and loons swam by – a lazy day to be sure! The loons really like the reef area.

After another great dinner (Chili mac, bread, cinnamon rolls for dessert), Audrey spied a snowshoe hare in the woods close to camp. She was able to get very close to it and snap some photos. This was a first for us as we had never seen one in the BW before. Earlier in the day, I had my own animal encounter (#2).

While standing in the water admiring the scenery, I had small crayfish crawling all over my feet and nibbling or scraping them. It was odd, but it didn’t really bother me, plus it was interesting to watch. Unfortunately, a larger crayfish came over and pinched my ankle. That put an abrupt end to my communing with the crayfish. There was considerable boat traffic today, including a large group looking for a site around 8 p.m.

Other than getting snagged a bunch of times on the reef, fishing after dinner was also uneventful. During our exploration of a bay, we located a loon’s nest tucked into the grass on a very small rock island. All that remained were a few egg shells. The full moon was shrouded in clouds…returning to camp at 9, we just missed the bloodsuckers’ attack. Just as we are getting to sleep, we heard a whippoorwill.