Sunday, August 30, 2020
Up at 5:30 am. Everything was packed the night before, as I had decided against making a breakfast on the last day so I could make the most of whatever still waters there were. The tent came down, I did another pass for any trash, and was on the water a half hour later. I made my way up to Two, took a wrong angle between islands and had a roundabout way to One, and then chatted with some groups coming in to advise them what sites were occupied and what were vacant, as of an hour or two ago, on Two and Three. I saw someone lugging a large hard-sided cooler and thought ... well, better you than me. You do you, as long as you leave no trace. I ended up stopping at one of the lake One sites where we took a break on our way in with my kid on her first trip, and watched a red squirrel knock loose immature pinecones from a tree. Every thirty seconds, another would fall twenty or thirty feet, bouncing off branches on its way down. After about ten of those, another red squirrel came out of the underbrush to investigate, steal one, run off, and then run back for another. It took the first squirrel a while to notice someone was stealing their bounty, but once they did, they raced down the tree as aggressively as a red squirrel can to chase off the other, who retreated and then yelled their version of squirrel profanities back. It's a meh site in general, 3-stars, #1676.
The problem that I then ran into was because of the low water levels in late August, the map was no longer accurate about what was an island and what was now a promontory. Thanks, extra hour of wasted time. See above for the combination of complete focus on effort, and frustration with my own minor mistakes.
Once I was headed in the right direction again, it was just ... slow and steady effort. A sunny day, in narrow parts of the lake sheltered from wind, watching group after group heading in, presumably for a weeklong trip ending on Labor Day weekend. This is about when I started thinking about work again, which was some combination of joy and frustration; I realized I had completely left those worries and anxieties behind for a few days, but as soon as I thought about the 8am Monday meeting all of the peace and serenity vanished. I need to come up with better ways of handling that besides the all-or-nothing approach.
Made my way out, cartopped the canoe, went back to Ely, dropped off the canoe, went another hour back to Virginia, got a quarter pounder, another three hours back to Mpls, stopped at Fleet Farm for chicken feed, got home, unpacked, ate dinner, took a shower, then checked work email and found out about a 7:45 am meeting with my director on Monday morning. It never stops.
So I then started looking at an October trip. I'm going to squeeze in one more from 10/15 to 10/18.