Much Doing of Nothing

We all slept well, probably helped along by efforts on the previous day. I got up around 7:00 and puttered around site, the kids stayed in the tent to read. I made a half-hearted attempt to start a fire. Between the wind and the slightly wet wood I didn't make much progress. I tried using rocks to make a wind break, but it didn't seem very effective.

Having not very much cut wood was probably the biggest issue with this fire — I blame the saw, not the sawyer ☺. I have two saws to choose from and took the folding saw because it is easier to pack. My bow saw would have been more efficient because of the thin blade. Since then, I've been noticing this Agawa Canyon folding bow saw all over the YouTube. It looks like the best of both and, as Jim demonstrates, is also handy in case we get a strange notion to paddle through a portage.

Mist Over Water, Slowly Rising

I decided that we didn't really need a fire anyhow — too dark by the firepit, but nice down by the lake. I took the camp stove and made some coffee to drink while watching mist rise from the lake.

When I sat with my eyes closed there was enough sun that I could feel it on my eyelids. I think that some people call that soaking in the Vitamin D, but since the D stands for Dork, I don't say that. Surprising weather for Ontario in September, but there we were.

It Lives

During this time, I heard the fire start up behind me. It had been at least thirty minutes since I was up there, it just took off on its own! I think that the smoldering kindling eventually dried the wood enough to catch. By this point I was enjoying sitting in the sun and decided to stay by the lake and let the fire go out on its own. There was not much wood and it burned for only ten or fifteen minutes.

Rise and Shine

Sitting by myself got old, so I called the kids out of the tent for some mandatory fun. They came down to the shore with me and played around on the rocks. They found some frogs, which were quickly named (of course) — Smiley, Tiny, Froggie, Itsy, and Hopper. Smiley, and either Tiny or Froggie were most social — the kids did not agree on the name for the second frog, so I've put both names here. The other two, Itsy and Hopper, might have actually been the same frog because they each only showed up only a few times.

Pancakes and Bacon

That day we had more time for breakfast so we chose pancakes and bacon instead of easy-make oatmeal. I wasn't able to find oil for the pancakes. Packing was a confusing time, and I couldn't remember if we even had it. I thought that perhaps we had decided to use butter (which I could find) instead of oil. That did not work out very well. The stove has a small circle of heat and the pan is fairly thin, which combined to make a hot spot in the middle. The butter was gone before the pancake hit the pan.

I eventually learned to distribute the heat throughout the cake by moving the pan around while cooking. However, by this time we already gained a charcoal circle the middle of the pan that seems to be there forever now. I found the oil when unpacking after the trip — too many special compartments in that fancy food barrel.

We brought bacon that was already cooked and then sealed in a plastic bag. It is apparently shelf-stable for months or years. Also, since it is precooked, it can be eaten right out of the bag. We're not savages though, so we decided to heat ours.

I wasn't sure about this part. Since this was a second cooking, I thought there was a chance it would wind up dried out. Happy to report it was not a problem. Sad to report that it gave off more fat than I expected and I had to find something to do with it. I soaked it into a paper towel and then I burned the towel in our fire later that day. The next morning, I cooked the bacon before the pancakes and used them to soak it up. This also fixed my butter/oil problems.

Wilderness makes up for a lot — we all claim to have enjoyed the slightly burnt, slightly raw, piles of dough with slightly burnt bacon. In the end the only complaint was that we should have packed more mix, we ran out of pancakes before running out of hunger.

Planning the Day

This day was planned as a rest day so we had nowhere to be. We had some vague ideas about hiking the cliffs, but nothing definite. We talked it over during breakfast and decided we would rather use the time to recuperate from the previous day's adventure. This turned into a full day of doing nothing, we were all happy to get the full rest day.

Planning in this rest day was a great idea that I'll do for all trips (longer than two days). Without the rest day we would have done more kilometres and seen more things, but it would not have been as enjoyable.

We filled the day with playing around the rocks, getting to know the frogs better, and reading in the tent.