Never had freeze dried spaghetti and hot apple cider tasted so good. I am conditioning the boys to salivate at the mention of Mountain House Freeze-Dried Spaghetti. Last year I force marched them up to Red Lake where we dined on it for the first time. They were exhausted and starving then, too.

The guys were asleep before I had the spoons cleaned. I crawled into my sleeping bag and laid down. You'd think after 12 hours of paddling I'd have passed out in seconds. Nope, not even close. I believe "camping" is actually an old Indian word that means "pray for dawn." I spent the first two hours with a line of two of the Huey Lewis song "It's Hip to be Square" on endless loop in my head.

Once, I snapped out of my stupor certain that we were under attack by wild animals. I clearly heard a wart hog slurping and gulping on Ryan, who was sleeping closest to the shore. I was trying to figure out how to toss Cody into the water and swim for it when I realized the noises were actually Ryan snoring. Who would have thought a kid so small could make such loud noises?

At some point I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up and looked at the clouds. I swore one was turning pink and smiled. When I woke up again, I saw more of the sky was pink, but I also heard a new sound. Was it waves lapping against the dock? Nope, it was rain. I tried to convince myself we could just lay there and let it rain, getting up when we got too wet, but I figured it would be easier for me to cover everyone with canoes than deal with the boys waking up shivering and soaking. The only downside of this was that Ryan didn't wake up while I was putting the canoe over him. When he came to later that morning, he was a little disoriented and understandable alarmed. Both Cody and I giggled at his startled squawk.