The loons woke me up at 2 AM. I somehow had still yet to take a moment to look at the stars, so I took my opportunity and wandered down to the lake front and enjoyed the best view of the heavens I had ever seen. The lack of all man-made light made the stars absolutely brilliant. I understand now how the Greeks could spend their entire lives studying the stars and plotting the constellations.

We all slept in until about 7:30 AM that morning and laid in bed a while before getting breakfast started. Pancakes, smoked sausage, and hash-browns were on the menu and it was heavenly. Really all the food was, and I think I know why. We cooked just about everything we ate in Parkay Squeeze. I'm not quite sure how I feel about squeezable, fake butter...yet all of our food tasted strangely amazing. Granted, it could also have been that we were all much hungrier than usual.

Wednesday was the day we had set aside to explore the Kelso loop! The plan was to paddle North up Sawbill, take the short portage over to the Kelso river, make our way through the water channels to Kelso lake, and then begin our search for the "Dolmen.' Apparently, long ago, dolmens were the Scandinavian version of a burial tombstone. It takes the form of one very large rock resting right on top of several little stones. The story is that, if this Kelso dolmen is truly the work of the Vikings, it completely changes our belief of Scandinavian history in the Americas, as this particular dolmen is dated to the 6th century.

Well, we found it! After navigating a tight water-way through beautiful marshes scattered with the most picturesque white and yellow water lilies, we found it. However, we were skeptical and we all had our different hypotheses for how that giant rock ended up on top. We decided it would have taken at least 15-20 large men to hoist it up, and even then, how are we to know these men were of Viking descent? A few of us believed it could very well have been another native people who placed the rock, whereas some of us thought that it was simply a freak accident of nature and that we were all wasting our time trying to guess who it was that created the monument. Either way, we had a great afternoon discussing its origin as we ate our lunch by the dolmen.

Another 4 1/2 hours of paddling and portaging were behind us as we returned to camp, only to head right back out to Alton to see if we could catch our dinner for that night. Our crawfish traps so far had collected about 35 of the little creatures, making for perfect bait. Alton looked clear and promising that afternoon and we were wildly hopeful. But alas; not a bite. Our only disappointment this trip was the fishing. We were so hoping to devour pounds of fresh bass and walleye! Nevertheless, the experience of the outdoors and the wildlife more than made up for our bad fishing luck. We were still loving every second of it.

6:00 PM and our favorite part of the day: dinner. Wednesday night's menu consisted of mac and cheese, freshly boiled crawfish, jambalaya, and salad - finally something green! By now, Davy was once again proving his unfaltering devotion to our campfire and kept us all nice and toasty. The boys planned to go back out fishing to try their luck one last time before our departure the next day; they just couldn't get enough. We were all feeling rather bittersweet that night about leaving our home away from home in those quiet woods. Perhaps we'd be back again some time.

Quotes of the day:

"Christina, you look like a complete taco." - Davy, sassily, as I lay half asleep in my sleeping bag

"Not wearing deodorant on this trip was a really good idea" - Joey

"I think it's been fun watching mom's hair grow" - Joey, as we reflected about the trip around the fire