Wednesday, July 17, 2013 Hoped to catch the sunrise but slept in. It rained during the night and everything was calm. The sky was clear and the morning water was like glass. Had a cup of tea over looking water, it was the most relaxed I felt in years. One of the Bills asked me what I was thinking. I realized I wasn't thinking at all. Not a care or worry was in my mind. I was meditating without being in the lotus position. The day’s plan was to paddle to Phoebe Lake. Most of the route was upstream on the Phoebe River. No problem, little current and the portages had some small waterfalls. Only incident was one canoe in our group was hung up on some rocks at a put in point and overturned. I went in the water to help, they were our most seasoned team. A few bumps and bruises but everything dried out eventually that night. Small beaver damn and slippery rocks made for a tricky put in location.
We reached Phoebe early enough to check out our camp site options. We settled on a small island that didn’t seem like it was used much. Great spot, few mosquitoes, had to deal with the large ant colonies on the island. Don’t know how they got here but they have been there a while. They didn’t bother us, we did our thing and they did theirs. As the sun began to set I watched a large bald eagle checking out a canoe from our group that was fishing. The group were catching very small fish and were tossing them back. The eagle decided that was a waste of good fish and snagged a couple from the water when they were tossed back in. Wish we could have stayed on this camp site a couple days. Only complaint was no good tree to hang our bear bag. Instead we went to plan B and found a spot in the woods away from our camp site to put the bags under a tree. N 47 51.427 W091 00.711 Hazel Lake, Knight Lake, Phoebe Lake