64 -- Rest Day Feed.

Ah, the luxury of sitting in bed until noon! Last night around midnight Hardy and I snuck out and brewed up some Formosa Oolong and made a batch of popcorn and then snuck back into the tent and munched on it while we read. It was great! You should have seen us walking around in the dark and trying to cook popcorn quietly so as not to wake any of the others up.

Cold day today and drizzling on and off.

I find it a little weird to come back from a trip like this. You spend all summer with just the same 11 people and no one else. It takes a couple days to adjust to other people being around. If I go into a crowded store, or if there are just a lot of people around I get so I’ can’t stand it. Claustrophobia. I have to get out to where it’s not crowded. Same thing with my insides. After eating no fresh food for 6 weeks that fresh food really screws up my system.

Later: This may be the rest day to remember for years to come. We finally made pancakes, getting out of bed to cook them around noon, then I started my bread while the guys started making doughnuts. Final count 307 doughnuts and 83 doughnut holes/munchkins.

Later: Ah, what a perfect day. This is what we had for dinner: green beans, applesauce, sloppy Joe’s ( I baked up 12 loaves of bread, so everyone got 1 loaf to put the sauce on. Sloppy joe sauce was freeze dried beef and 2 ketchup, spaghetti mix, dried onions, dried veg., garlic powder, thyme, oregano, garlic powder, etc. spices and boiled forever. Wow they were good- better than any in the States. Then we had fish on the side. 12 walleye, and 3 pike (2 were huge 10-15 lb. each) In fact there was so much we decided to save half of the fish for morning. SO GOOD! Then, for desert apple cobbler. I saved mine for morning. I love it cold and I’m not as hungry now as I will be then. Those doughnuts are so good. I’m saving some of them too, but not for long they’re so good. Then just before dinner, the sun broke through an opening in the clouds and within 15 minutes the sky was almost clear! I know I’ll remember this day for a long time. It’ll be another cold one tomorrow morning. We were surprised that Clay & Bill didn’t pass through or even camp here tonight. Hopefully they’re OK. We probably won’t see them until a couple days out of Rupert’s House.

Beautiful falls here. We sill shoot trouble spot #8 tomorrow, right after the Martin joins the Rupert. Wow that’s going to be one big river I just hope the next six trouble spots aren’t tougher than #7. It was tricky enough. They probably will be though. There will be a lot of power and water, over twice what we’ve had to cope with so far! Yikes!

Chuck carved a paddle today out of Aspen I cut down for him.