In the afternoon, a series of storms blew in.  We were taken aback, when paddling in the rain squalls in the 65 degree weather, to have a bolt of lightning seemingly appear out of nowhere (it didn’t seem like thunderstorm weather as it had been raining off an on all day and cold).  We quickly skeedaddled to the nearest shoreline and used the time to have lunch.  By the time we finished there were no further bolts, so we continued into Lake Three.

Here’s my “magazine cover” shot near our campsite on Lake Three.  Just an hour or so before this, we had already found a campsite as it looked like unstable weather continued to approach, so we abandonded plans to go further.  It was a good decision as there was about three hours of lightning and intermittent rain after we had camp set up.  Some other folks out on a trip sought shelter in our campsite as they were out and some didn’t have rain gear, they had no shelter, so we perched them under a tarp we set up for a few hours.  Amazingly, we saw many parties paddling across the lake during the lightning storm, betting the bolts would not hit them.

The night before, we instruct the girls on the finer points of hanging the food pack in the air, to make it harder for critters, large and small, to get the food back overnight.

Here are the girls after a squall moved through.  Shortly before this, we could hear a big wind coming at us far off in the woods, and with a bit of trepidation listened as it moved closer.  When the crescendo of windswept trees intersected with our campsite, we could see out on the lake a section where the wind actually lifted water off the surface of the lake and danced it around up in the air.

Some woodland flowers in bloom.  If my northland botany is still trustworthy – I think these are called pippsissewa.

one year ago…