Wednesday. 7/4.
Happy Birthday USA! Great day! Got an early start in the boat. . McLeod Lake is about 15 miles long running south to north, but skinny, more like a river than a lake. We both know that the sense of wilderness will continue to amplify as we go farther, but this lake is pretty remote. We saw most of the lake and only 4 or 5 cabins on the banks. We had our cameras and binoculars, and I had cobbled together a couple of fishing poles (still haven’t found time to do the major re-organization of the fishing equipment). We were hoping to see more animals on the shore and some birds. Saw none of the former, but lots of the latter. Too-many Bald Eagles to count. More or less anytime you do a 360-degree scan of the horizon, you see a Bald Eagle. We also saw Ospreys, Loons, Grebes, several varieties of ducks, and miscellaneous others. The most entertaining was a mother Red Merganser and her 18 babies (see picture of them scurrying to escape us). So far we’ve added 8 birds to our life list: Ring-Necked Duck, Yellow Headed Blackbird, Common Yellowthroat, Bonaparte’s Gull, Barrow’s Golden Eye, American Redstart, Ruddy Duck, and Red Breasted Sapsucker (I’ve always been a sucker for Sapsuckers). We also caught a dozen or so fish. 4 or 5 ½-1 pound Rainbows and a bunch of unidentified fish that we call Barking/Barfing/Shitting Fish because when you are trying to get the hook out of these dudes, they barf and/or shit and also make a barking sound. Otherwise they’re cute. This is not supposed to be a good fishing lake. Can’t wait until we get someplace where the fishing’s good.
The lake was like glass most of the day, not a ripple. In the morning, the only other watercraft we saw was a single canoe. By the afternoon we had seen a total of 4 other boats. Magnificent.
