When we arrived back at our site, we changed into our bathing suits and jumped into the lake. The water was so clear and much warmer than Lake Ontario (what we are used to). We then chilled some white wine in the water and started to prepare lunch. We made a very lazy meal of macaroni dinner, but a weird variety that was hot cheeto flavoured. We listened to some music and read for a few hours in the afternoon. Jives started another fire which was much more successful due to all the dry wood on our new site! After a few hours we started dinner; salmon, zucchini and mashed potatoes, all roasted over the fire. We played a game of Carcassonne and had hot chocolate (smores flavour). We headed to bed around 9pm (sleep with the sun) and sat up in the tent a bit to listen to music. 

I woke up at about 6am and made myself some coffee which I drank in the sun by the water. The loons, as always, were so vocal early in the morning. I could hear them calling constantly, their call was almost haunting. I watched one loon run across the completely still water of Laurel Lake. The lake was a lot less misty that morning, but still so clear and still. I watched bees going to and fro, their hive was in the base of a tree right beside my sitting spot. They didn’t bother me, I didn’t bother them. I could also hear red squirrels in the trees, they were much smaller than the squirrels at home, and they looked like little red headed punk rockers. They make such funny sounds, like a mix between a laugh and the sound the predator makes, with a hint of “child making machine gun sounds with their mouth”.

Jives woke up a few hours later and we made breakfast at the fire, bagels with tomato and jalapeno. We had many coffees and teas and sat in the sunshine reading. At around 2pm we set out on a little adventure. We got in the canoe and paddled 10 minutes away to the portage trail headed to Loxley Lake. We carried our canoe ashore and then set off on the 1108 metre portage route. This route was beautiful, like a land where you’d find totorro, covered in green moss and birch trees. The hike took about 20 minutes and along the way we saw three piles of moose droppings, probably because we were right next to a marshland. At the end of the portage I literally gasped. We had found ourselves on a beautiful white sand beach, just like we were in Pirates of the Caribbean. The lake (Loxely) wasn’t as big as Laurel Lake but it was very windy and wavy. We explored the marsh land to our left, hoping to spot a moose. The water was so warm, if only we had brought our bathing suits, but how could we have anticipated this? After walking around quite a while in the sandy water, we had a granola bar snack, put our shoes back on and walked 20 minutes back to our canoe. Along the walk we collected quite a bit of firewood and filled our canoe for the trip back to our campsite. Before heading back to our site though, we paddled into the marshlands and saw a beaver dam 

Back at the site we grabbed our last two beers and sat on a rock in the sun to drink them. Then we changed into our swimsuits and jumped in the lake, swimming out to the “seagull island”.