Neil was up at 4 AM with high blood sugar and severe nausea. He wasn't improved at all when we got up at 6 AM to have our breakfast. We hadn't intended for this to be a layover day, but there is a danger in vomiting and nausea with a diabetic on insulin, and it was just not wise to start out. We tried a light breakfast of oatmeal, Tang, and coffee on a sunny, breezy morning with a temperature of 57 degrees. We heard a loon at first light. That is the sound that makes you realize you have really come to the BWCA! How I do love it!

While he rested in the tent, trying to keep his breakfast down, I kept photographing everything I saw: the island off our shore, the damselflies, flowers, etc. Later, as I was sitting on the shore reading, a young couple in a Forest Service canoe paddled up for an "inventory" of our campsite. The girl had multiple piercings with fine wires in them. The young man was from Grand Rapids, Michigan. They cut down a tree that was blocking our biffy trail and made a little conversation. They did ask to see our permit (a first for us.) The young woman told me about the weather forecast for thunderstorms and heavy rain, and suggested that perhaps it was a good thing that we had taken a layover day. With the sun shining brightly it didn't make much impression on us at the time.

They said that they had seen a large bull moose with a rack early in the morning on the eastern end of the lake. I was hoping we could go down and find him!

After they left, we went back to our earlier pursuits. I watched a dragonfly hatch from its case and dry its wings out in the breeze before taking flight. It was watching me as I took the photos, so I was pleased that when it actually flew (about 45 minutes after I had noticed it on the rock all wet and folded up) it fluttered to my leg, walked up to my knee, and sat gazing into my eyes intently. I called Neil when it flew again, landing on my forearm and staying there for a few minutes. Looking at me almost as if to say, "Are you my Mommy?" Finally, it made its complete flight into the wind. It might sound like this is about as exciting as watching paint dry, but actually I have developed a very profound appreciation for small wonders during our many BWCA trips. This was a unique and memorable afternoon, making a personal contact with such a beautiful creature. I was glad to have experienced the whole process. [I will not include the entire sequence of photos: just a representative sampling.]

We ate our lunch, covered in swarming flies. One of the most disconcerting problems was trying to have a cup of coffee, tea, or hot chocolate. Because the flies were drawn to the warmth, they would fly to our cups, and then dive-bomb into the hot liquid. Soon, if you weren't really paying attention, there would be two or three flies swimming/floating in your drink! At first, I dumped the drinks out. After a few days, I would just scoop them out with a spoon and go on to finish my coffee. All of this while our arms, hands, backs, necks, and sometimes even faces were covered with crawling flies! I do NOT remember this fondly, even twenty years after the fact.

It seemed like a good idea to take a short paddle around our immediate area now that Neil was feeling some better. The wind was alternately quiet and gusty, and the sky a shallow gray, looking more like storms were indeed coming. We checked out the campsite across from ours (visible to us) and decided that it wasn't a better place to weather a storm than where we were. Anyway, it would be too much effort at at this point to make a move. And the flies were everywhere--not just our campsite. They did seem less bothersome, however, when we were on the water.

We spent the afternoon organizing the tent for a possible storm, getting everything ready, and watching the sky. At 3:30 there were sprinkles and those LLLOOOONNNNNGGGGG echoing thunderboomers that you get on the lakes with the rocky shores. We took a bag of food and plenty of fresh water to the tent, read our books and played Racko and listened to the storm until dark.