Another base camp day! Calm as can be at 8am. Dew on everything. Sun was bright and hot right away. We had the apples & cinnamon flaxseed oatmeal and it was awesome. We realized we had a ton of food left, so we decided to eat some pop tarts and GORP as well. It turns out I forgot the Babybel cheese and salami slices at home, so we couldn’t do our meat and cheese wraps. Both of us were pretty bummed about that, but we managed to survive.

We went fishing after breakfast and coffee and got completely skunked once again, after trolling crankbaits to the narrows, drifting the narrows 3 times with rattle raps, and casting rattle raps near the northwestern cliffs, and then trolling crankbaits all the way back to camp. It was unfortunately pretty windy unlike the previous days, which limited our coverage of the narrows which we wanted to hit harder than we did. The bright sun didn’t help either.

Back at camp, hanging out near the fire area, we saw 2 groups of people, one coming from the narrows (2 canoes, likely from Hanson) and one from Topaz (4 canoes). They were the first people we had seen besides the DNR guys. Figured they had to be pretty bummed about both sites on the lake being taken. I wondered about the timing; it was a Tuesday, which means they put in probably on Monday regardless of a west side or east side entry. I wondered who puts in on a Monday, but maybe people who travel from out of state do.

I decide to try for a nap, or at least just lie down, at about 4pm. Starting to get a little impatient with F who hasn’t been helping with many camp chores, often messing with electronics. He and I are good friends so I’m doing my best to coach him along (he who has been on 2 trips without me before). I still kinda feel like I’m carrying the trip. But, I’m enjoying my time on Cherry, so I try not to let it bother me.

We ended up having dinner early again, Mountain House beef stroganoff, which we thought was quite good. The wind mostly died down after 7, and we thought about going out to fish, but decided against it since the landing wasn’t the greatest (rocky and slippery) even with good lighting. We had heard that there may be some thunderstorms overnight and the next few nights for the area, so we decided to leave Cherry the next day, one day early. We ended up going to bed at 8:20pm after a little whiskey. We planned to be up at 5:45am.