Friday, July 28, 2006

We were a little slower getting out of bed this morning- Alex and ML were not accustomed to getting as
much of a workout as we'd had and were both feeling pretty sore. This ended up being a layover day.
We had a couple leisurely cups of Joe, and I made apple pancakes for breakfast with butter and maple
syrup. Somewhere during this process, we discovered that one of the lovely cedars in our kitchen area
had a nest of paper wasps living inside of it! Wasps were busy flying in and out of the base of the tree.
One member of our group, who will remain nameless, thought it might be possible to burn, smoke, or
otherwise exterminate the little buggers, but commonsense prevailed and we realized we'd just have to
co-exist. In the guilty party's defense, s/he HAD just been stung, hard, on the ankle at the time that the
murderous thoughts transpired!

We spent the better part of the day playing water Frisbee, laying in a large supply of firewood, going
over the route for our daytrip the next day, and attempting(in vain) to catch some fish. For some
reason, we never have much luck in the BWCA, although Jules is a pretty good fisherman otherwise. We
did get a visit from the Rangers- my first ever permit check. They were real nice, and ended up knowing
Bob from the DJing that he used to do around Duluth, so we had a good chat about bluegrass, the
Grateful Dead, and music in general. We also discovered that we had a pretty active local population of
turtles, mostly painted turtles and one big snapper who got named "Big Head Todd".

Dinner was pretty simple- scalloped potatoes with summer sausage, and for dessert....peanut butter
brownies. There is nothing like a fresh, hot brownie by the fire-MMMMM good! It was too windy as
night came on to keep the fire going, so we retired to our tents for the night.
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