We set out early in the morning on Saturday, getting on the water by 7:30am...
We paddled down long pond after portaging in, and stopped at a small island for breakfast after a short paddle...
Ben noodled around in the water with a sample net, and was able to catch a crawdad...
The beast hung out with us while we enjoyed our breakfast, and then was released back into the waters of Long Pond...
Both Ben and i were camping in our hammocks for this trip, and we set them up as soon as we got to camp...partly to stake a claim to the site, and partly to have a place to hide from the bugs...
Once the camp was set up, we built a small smoky fire to chase some of the bugs away while deciding what to do...
Ben loved the hammock chair that I brought along, and spent a lot of time in it during the weekend, snacking and reading and napping...
We paddled down the length of Long Pond, and found this great big snapping turtle...
We hiked up to Mountain Pond and partway up to Long Pond Mountain before deciding the bugs and heat were too much for us, and that we'd prefer to swim and paddle instead...
We stopped off for a lovely swim and splash at a wonderful beach at the mouth of the bay that the hike to Mountain Pond is on, and I took this picture, because I like macro-mode...
We got back to camp and could see storm clouds rolling in, so we started dinner with dessert, and roasted a gazillion marshmallows before enjoying some MountainHouse Mac and Cheese...
After dinner we took turns telling stories as night fell around us...mine tend to be thinly veiled ecology and morality lessons with zombies and kidnappings and bombs and catastrophic meteorite impacts mixed in to help the medicine go down...Ben tells tales of adventure and good guys versus bad guys and glorious battles...he acts his stories out and uses different voices...
He has also started reading on his own for pleasure for the first time this summer...it's wonderful to see and makes me so happy...
When the crashing boomers and rain and lightning started, we retired to the hammocks, Ben inside of his, and me under him on the ground while he read to me...it was lovely...
The next day we got up early, breakfasted royally, broke camp like a well-oiled machine, and paddled/portaged our way towards home...Ben was a big help carrying his share of the stuff across the portages, and we're planning our next trip already...
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