More Canoe Trip

May 6-10

5-6 Tuesday. I woke up around 5 with Kaid asking if he could join me in my tent. He got sick in the night and needed a place to sleep. Bryce ended up getting sick to. We had a good time canoeing with some fun rapids to go through. We got on the river little before 11:30. We had pancakes again. Our new campsite is pretty cool. It is sunny and a little breezy so everything is drying out nice. I did some laundry but I think I did it a little late in the day so I don’t expect it to dry. We had an awesome relaxing evening. I am learning how to relax more and more out here. I am feeling pretty good at the moment due to clean clothes. A couple of the guys were hiking behind campsite looking for golf balls (for some reason this campsite has some) and they found an abandoned railroad bridge. It was aesthetic but a little rotted and sketchy. We canoed about 8 miles today. Chief Tye is cutting wood again. Surprise.

5-7 Wednesday. Another new day. It is looking to be a sunshiny type of day which is awesome. Trace woke up sick today. That brings the count up to 3. Although Bryce and Kaid are definitely feeling a little better today. We have pancakes again. Because we don’t have oil we can not have a lot of heat or the flapjacks burn to the cast iron right away. Therefore it takes around 5 minutes for one pancake. I named my canoe The Tooth Ferry this morning. I can not be the captain of a ship without no name you know what I’m saying. I brought one book to read. The Boys in the Boat. The Chest Falls rapids were a party! I was pretty nervous leading up to them but we all made it through pretty easily. Soon after we got to our new campsite Marco caught the first fish! A 22” walleye. If you ask Marco he would pry say 27 or 36 inches. Crazy story but I even managed to catch a fish. Mine was about a 17 inch female small mouth bass full of eggs so that pretty little lady got yeeted back to her home. A few more fish were caught so we had a little change in our supper menu. You pry won’t believe this but we had Mac and cheese and canned beans and canned fruit again and we’re even getting it for tomorrow breakfast. The fish was delicious tonight but there was plenty of lemon pepper seasoning. Well it is getting late.

5-8 Thursday. It is a beautiful morning. I feel like I need a shower. The fire always feels nice in the morning. We had mac and cheese and beans for breakfast. Enough said. Today was an awesome canoe day. We didn’t have far to go so we took it nice and slow. When we got to our new campsite we had some Clif bars for lunch that were delicious. I could have ate like at least 6. Some hotdogs and mayochup were sounding so fire in my head today. Chief Tye caught a small mouth bass and I got to filet it after supper. Siesta was kind of warm and I was really feeling like I needed a shower so I jumped in the cold river. It felt really refreshing and I felt like a new man afterwards. We had the meal that will not be named for supper. For the life of me I can not figure out why we had this meal so many times. I smell like a fish. I read a bunch out of the Boys in the Boat today. It was my turn again to wash the boys feet so that was enjoyable.

5-9 Friday. Everyone got out to devotions in good time. We are having pancakes again. Right at the start of our endeavor for the day we had some really fun rapids. Chief Tye caught a fish about right away. We are coming up on a dam so the waters getting really slow like basically still water. It makes it a lot harder to paddle. We had a good funny evening climbing trees and lowering ourselves to the ground. Marcus found some yellow and orange mushrooms that we fried up and ate. They were pretty good and tasted a lot like chicken. This is probably why they were named Chicken of the Woods. We had the meal that will not be named again and all of our guts feel like roadkill on a silver platter. We are getting restocked tomorrow which is a good thing because we are out of tp. I am going back to camp tomorrow so the group and Chiefs are going to be on their own for a week. I can’t wait to eat some real food and take a real shower and put on some real clean clothes. It has been real. It has been good. It has been real good.

5-10 Saturday. We met chief Dave by the boat launch by the dam and loaded up our canoes and portaged to Shawville. I was pretty wore out. I took a long amazing shower. There was a fire and some people hanging out at the top of power line so I went up there for awhile. It was amazing to hang out with camp people again.