I did not note what time I woke up, but the sun was out and it was gorgeous. My tentative plans had been to head from Gillis to Bingshick via Flying Lake, but that was surely not going to happen today. Nothing was going to make me rush from this lovely bugless campsite with ample fire wood, fine swimming spot and cooperative lakers.

I got up and fed Regent as is required first thing every day, then leisurely set about the business of building the fire and making pancakes. I had been quite pleased with the mix I had come up with over the winter of 2 parts coarse, whole wheat pancake mix, 1 part whey, and 1 part quick-cook oatmeal. These pancakes just stuck with me longer than others, and I love doing pancakes over an open fire. I coated them in pure maple syrup and a slab of butter. Foolishly I had packed my preferred unsalted butter, which by day 9 was starting to smell just a bit funky. It did not ruin the pancakes, but I would not use any more of it after this breakfast either. For the next warm weather trip it will be either salted butter or ghee for anything past day 5.

The rest of the day was also quite leisurely, and mostly a repeat of the prior afternoon. Processing a bit more wood, a swim, then in the boat for some more fishing and exploring. I wandered over to investigate a couple of the other sites along the north shore. One more modest laker was taken and cleaned, and back in camp his remains also taken back to where I’d taken them the day before. I was surprised to see the remains from the day before were undisturbed. I added the new one and went back to camp. Dinner and the rest of the evening followed almost exactly as the day before. I had not seen any people today, but did see the FS beaver flying over twice; once nearly directly over me and then later further south. It was as lovely an evening as it could be on Gillis.