I awake early this morning with sharp pain on the inside of my left knee. I had felt some discomfort
the night before, but hadn't thought much of it at the time. I just figured that I had maybe twisted it
slightly on some portage somewhere along the way. But unfortunately, today it is much worse, and I
have a difficult time extracting the leg from my sleeping bag. I get out to walk and discover that lifting
the leg with a bent knee is near impossible, making uphill walking particularly hard. With the toughest
part of our trip still ahead, this must get better quickly. If it gets any worse, it could jeopardize the trip.

Trying not to disturb Heidi, I get out of the tent to walk around a bit and hopefully loosen up the
knee. It's a very crisp, gray, foggy morning as I venture out and begin to explore our campsite. In the
brighter morning light, the campsite looks even bigger. Trails spread out in all directions, and I begin
to limp along one nice path to the west. Before long, all alone by itself among the pine needles, I spot a
pink lady's slipper. Further on, I see dozens more scattered about. We had unfortunately been too
rushed the previous day to get any good pictures of the lady's slippers we found on the portage to Long
Island Lake, so I was excited to get another chance.

I head back to camp to get coffee started, and just as I'm pouring my first cup, Heidi begins to stir
back at the tent. I hand her a cup of coffee as she emerges from our tan, gray and navy blue Kelty
Teton 4. With mugs in hand, we watch the rising sun burn away the morning mist over Frost Lake.

Our original plan for today included the possibility of heading a few portages west to Octopus Lake
on the Frost River and doing some exploration north from there into the Hairy Lake Primitive
Management Area (PMA). But my knee requires rest, and we are still both beat from the previous day's
effort, so we decide instead to stick around camp and relax. It's another spectacular day, and we enjoy
it by resting, taking pictures and eating a lot. At some point, a canoe with a couple of young fisherman
floats by, and they hook something fairly large right in front of our campsite. After they successfully
land the fish into their boat, we exchange cheers of congratulations from across the water. We
speculate that these must be members of the group staying at the next site over.

To one side of our campsite is a perfect sitting rock that becomes labeled my "thinking rock". I
don't recall actually doing much thinking there, but I do spend some quality time on it resting my sore
knee and looking out over the lake. A few yards away from the sitting rock is the camp fire grate with
nice log benches on the lake side and large boulders sheltering it from the other. On the back side of
the boulders we find the skull of some animal that someone has likely placed there. Every camp must
have it's mascot, so we figure this must be ours.

By evening, we wrap up some camp chores and settle in for another meal of freeze dried pasta. For
tomorrow, we decide to take a wait and see attitude about my knee and whether to stay another day to
rest it. I privately determine that somehow or another we will continue on, even if it means wrapping
the knee in duct tape. I didn't come all this way to the edge of the Frost River just to watch a few
sunsets and then turn around. Heidi and I watch as the full moon ascends through the trees across the
lake, and soon thereafter we turn in for a good night's rest, in hopes that tomorrow will be a day of
travel.