12 August 2017, Saturday
We sleep in almost until 8 this morning and wake with the sun warming our toes as it shines on the foot of the tent. Breakfast is a bacon and cheese potato cake, the first time we have tried this out in the bush, as opposed to car camping. It turns out delicious, but clean-up takes a bit of soaking due to the burnt on bits.
We take time after breakfast to listen to the bees hum in the pine trees, make some minor equipment repairs and filter extra water. A party of 3 canoes, and eight people paddles past the opposite shore heading back the way we came. We are buzzed several times by a hummingbird as we rest and enjoy the sunshine. Shabbat Shalom indeed!!
O spends much of the afternoon entering take-out coordinates in the GPS. We both admire a 120 cm long, very contented-looking garter snake sunning by the shore.
Bechamel mac and cheese is our dinner and a half-baked gooey chocolate fudge brownie is dessert (mixed and then simmered in a zip lock bag for about 20 minutes in a pot of lake water. Not bad.) As we savor our brownie on our granite slab we spy what appears to be a dark log poking up from the water. It moves very slowly then suddenly disappears beneath the surface. It reappears. A frog? A fish? A turtle? No. We both stare through our binoculars. There is a definite nose and two eyes which blink at us. An otter!! Stealth fishing along our shore. We watch as we continue to eat our brownie. The otter resurfaces several times as it traverses our shoreline. Then a splash and we see it no more. I hope it caught a yummy fish!
Our brownie is almost finished. The remainder is tucked away for breakfast tomorrow. Food bags are hung. We sit by the lake and await sundown and the Perseid meteor shower. As we wait, MTO!!! We are swarmed by mosquitoes. O sets up the thermacell and within 15 minutes the pests are gone. The sky slowly darkens and we find Cassiopeia. Just beneath this constellation I see two meteors streak by. O misses them. Soon we both see another that leaves a glowing tail across the sky. Then another with glowing tail. As I tuck gear under the canoe in preparation for bedtime, O sees a third streaking meteor. He turns in, but I stay out a bit longer to admire the Milky way. To our west a loud coyote chorus begins. I think they are saying it is time for me to turn in as well.