The Lumberjack Breakfast prepared by the park staff this morning was really good.  Pancakes, sausages, beans, maple syrup, juice and coffee. YUM!  9:30 would have been a little late for breakfast in a fishing camp had it not been raining.  Good deal, sleep in and have breakfast served.

On Friday night of the long weekend (Civic Holiday in Canada) we were treated to a performance of folksongs by a group with it’s roots here in the park.  Many years ago these gentlemen began performing here and adopted the name Wakami Wailers.  One was the Park Superintendent and another worked in a different park.  This performance was the 1^st time they performed together in 6 years and the first time in the park in 13 years. With guitars, mandolin, banjo, fiddle/violin, spoons, drum, harmonica with some boot stomping and hand clapping the performance lasted over 2 hours.  Great harmony and stories of logging traditions important to the region and park itself.  The benefit concert was for restoration and operation of the park’s logging museum.

We were up at 5:30AM and on the lake early.  It was cool and overcast but the forecast was better than we have had in days.  We hadn’t been out to the other end of the lake yet this trip and it just needed to be done.

We sped across the smooth surface to try out a walleye hole.  I caught one nice walleye and we stirred up a bunch of little perch that madly nibbled at our bait.  A 24” northern grabbed my line after chasing Kent’s nightcrawler to the surface.  No steel leader or heavyweight line but I got it in anyway.  Time to move on.  Next, troll up the river til it narrows to impassable.  We had hoped to see moose out here but the closest we got was a hoof print.  But all was not lost.  The river is full of northern and they were biting today.  I caught my personal biggest, 28” long.  He went back into the lake along with all but one other.  We actually lost count of how many we caught.  That’s a good fishing day.

Then the showers began.  It rained just enough to drag out the umbrellas then quit and the sun shone brightly.  It did this four or five times before we heard the first rumbles of thunder in the distance.  When we turned out of the river and looked downlake, dark clouds and sheets of rain with scattered lightening and rumbles of thunder lie between us and camp, 5 miles away.  So what do we do?  We wait.  The first storm slides through just missing us.  We batten down everything and make a mad dash nearly the full length of the lake as the next storm is forming and moving in.  Even at 28mph that 5 miles seemed to take an eternity.  All is well though.  We are home, fish in hand having had a full 10 hour day on the lake.

It was just about too big a project for the motorhome.  It filled up the entire table and then some.  We ended up moving subsections off onto the top bed just to make room to work.  We ate on plates in our laps for about three days.  But we finished it, our 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle of shore birds of North America.

We had Judy Cook’s recipe blueberry buckle for breakfast along with a bowl of oatmeal with berries.  It made the aching back and cramping legs feel much better.

Our neighbor here in camp has been talking about her “bottling” blueberries since we met them.  The berries are in peak season and they have found a patch in the park that is just hanging blue with berries.  She is actually making compote and hot packing it in pints to take home.  They have 30 jars (pound jars she calls them).  Wow.  That’s a larger scale than we are interested in but we can’t pass up a bit of picking of our own.  We set out to find a patch.  While the neighbor did share a lot about her canning activity she did NOT share where this magnificent patch is located.  No problem, we will find our own patch.  We have picked along the road here at this park before.  We drove a little, picked a little, drove a little, picked a little.  This was really like work.  There must be a better patch.

Oh yeah, Kent found it along a dead end road at the edge of the park.  The bushes were just loaded with berries.  The hillside was blue.  We quickly picked a gallon or so.  Once the mosquitoes found us we had lots of motivation to pick faster.  We will have plenty to eat up.  I don’t plan to do any bottling.