BWCA Day #2

Tuesday, August 26th

The next morning was another BWCA classic – fog over the lake, loons calling the distance, and a crisp, bright sunrise. The next traditional meal was prepared for breakfast: Eggs-McStone. These are simply toasted English muffins, eggs, and cheese’ but, in the wilderness everything has a better name and is much more tasty!

After a casual morning of coffee and campsite breakdown, we hit the water. We paddled for a short while and got to a “pull through portage”. The connection between the lakes was so short and filled with water that we could pull the canoe across.

Blueberries were hunted for but the better hunters, bears, must have beaten us to them all. We got to our next campsite around 2:30 pm and quickly got everything set up. As Hazels, we all have to keep working so you can imagine that everything got done fairly quickly. Next, it was water filtering and swimming time. The water was a great temperature that allowed me to swim comfortably but sufficiently cooled me down from the heat of the day. One of the most memorable moments of the trip came when Dad and Kristen came in from filtering water. With Dad still in the back of the canoe, Kristen started to pull the front of the canoe out of the water to “help” make it easier for Dad to get out. Well, the canoe came to an off balance rest on a rock as Dad, in a leaning, slow motion state, started to say, “I wouldn’t do that, I wouldn’t do that!” And then as I watched, SPLUSH! Dad tipped over the side of the canoe into the lake. Thankfully, only in to a couple feet of water but it certainly woke him up!

With the fun being taken care of, dinner was a second round of brats (No Kraut) and pasta salad. Dinner was followed by hot chocolate by the lake. You may ask, “What did you talk about?” Well, I don’t actually recall everything, it was just pleasant to sit with my dad and sister and talk about whatever came to mind. No worldly problems were solved; no great philosophical debates were had. We talked about stars, common sayings over heard in Minnesota like, “Yah”, “Oh sure”, etc. We also discussed how it would be great to have our spouses here to observe us all together. I am sure they would see the incredible resemblance we all have to each other in our mannerisms.