The Severed Cortex

I slept just OK overnight but only part of that was due to sleeping in a tent on the ground. My allergies were kicking into high gear just as I started to lay down so I had trouble breathing. But, the biggest problem was that I drank way too much water while sitting around the campfire. The water purifier really worked great and while hydration is very important, over hydration right before going to bed is not so good. I woke up around 3:00 am needing to seriously shake the dew off my lilies. And it was cold. So cold I didn't want to get up, but eventually I did. Hurriedly out the tent door and hurriedly back to the warm sleeping bag.

I awoke for good around 6:30 am and immediately set out fishing. Unfortunately I had the same bad luck as yesterday. I threw spinners and a couple of different kind of plastics and didn't get even a look. I even broke out the fly rod and pitched it around a few times. Nada. And just about the time I gave up, Parker stirred out of his tent. We cooked a decent breakfast of sausage and peppers and egg beaters. The wraps worked less well than they did last night so the mess kit was the way to go. Although I would have preferred the much better real eggs, I have to admit the egg beaters in a carton were very convenient. I have to give Nancy credit for steering me that way. They tasted like eggs someone had already eaten before, but they did serve the purpose at hand. We also ate some fruit I brought along so we wouldn't catch scurvy. We cleaned up the dishes and started in on breaking down the camp. By the time we were done and had the canoe packed, it was already 10:30. I wasn't in a real big hurry to begin with, but breaking camp that late just seems lazy.

My goal was to get down past Jerktail Landing today and I figured we would spend the heat of the day canoeing in that direction. I remembered to turn on the GPS this time so we could breadcrumb the path of the river. Using that against the Park Service map showed me all I needed to know when we stopped an hour and a half later. We were going too fast. At this rate we could have done the entire 18 miles in about 6 hours. So, we fished. And skipped rocks. And generally dilly-dallyed. And then somewhere around 3:30 we passed Jerktail Landing. Unfortunately there weren't too many good spots to camp right below there and 30 minutes later we were at Twin Rocks, roughly 5 miles from the takeout spot. Fortunately there was a good spot to camp here. No sand like last night, but small pea gravel that wouldn't be too bad.
However, there are two bad things with Twin Rocks. One is that it's a popular spot for floaters to stop and swim and party. The second is that there is an ATV/horse trail leading to it, which invites the locals. Sure enough, a 1/2 hour later a six pack of floaters arrived. They jumped off the rocks for 45 minutes or so while we sat in the chairs and watched and then they left us alone. We fished for a short period of time and then started in on finding firewood, which was not too plentiful. We managed to scrounge up enough to make a fire, but not enough to make a fire last very long. And since the plan was to roast polish and brats over the fire on sticks, I wanted to wait until it got closer to dark so we would get a little real campfire time too. We fished and skipped rocks in the interim and Parker started reading Who Killed Palomino Molero, which I had brought him. Eventually around 7:15 we got the fire started and by 8:00 we were full of polish sausage and brats ... with sweet hot mustard.
The fire lasted longer than expected, and we talked some and read some. But by a little after 10:00, after a slight mishap with Parker's tent falling, we headed for bed.