1:00 AM

I woke with a start.. I did take a nap, a nap that lasted 8 hours. I busied myself with reading a bit, and then checked the windy app.. it is clear now. Since I covered my skylight with foam for extra heat retention, I needed to look outside to see if there were actual stars up there. There were yesterday, if partially covered by clouds.. and since I'd hit the battery cut-off before going to bed, I had no idea what the temp outside was... I braced myself and opened the door. COLD. VERY COLD. MORE LAYERS NEEDED. I raced to the car and grabbed my fuzzy jacket and pulled it on over layers of my merino wool t-shirt and my t-max thermal underwear top. I found my fuzzy gloves and put those on too, and of course my hat. Well, oh hey, there ARE stars. So I pulled out my Star tracker and got my backpack on and walked down to the shoreline. I knew from last time I was here that the galactic center would be on the far side of the lake from the canoe rental racks, and I also knew there was a bit of a 'dip' in the hills I could frame it in. Though the whole center won't rise until December-ish I could get at least half of it straight up there. So I spent a bunch of time setting up, trying to sight in my star tracker with Polaris.. but didn't do too well because the little dipper was very very faint for some reason.. but I got it in the general direction, and usually that will give me a bit of lee-way with exposures. Usually you'd only get ~10 seconds before things get noticeably streaky, where I was able to test up to 40 seconds with acceptable stretching. I set my ultra wide up and set it just before infinity which I'd marked as 'in focus' for stars. I got quite a few good exposures, checked with the zoom function on the back panel of my camera. Around 3:30am I packed up and went back, and slept for another few hours until the sun was up. I had another big breakfast with taters, eggs, and bacon but it wasn't salty enough this time.. I guess I lost a lot of sodium during my hike of the crack yesterday. No amount of salt added would make it 'seasoned' so I gave up after adding a good teaspoon. It was good anyhow. I'll have one of those freeze dried meals for lunch, those always have extra sodium. After doing my dishes, it was time to go visit the great tree.

10:30 - The great tree.

I set up my insta360 on the hood as I traversed Bell Lake road, it was not too bad.. but it is a lot more wash boarded now. I met one van that was going exceptionally slow, and one pickup that was going moderately fast on the way in. I arrived at the parking lot after a 9KM drive down the road, just after passing a guy on an ATV all kitted out in Hunter's Orange, he let me pass. But at this point, I had.. an issue. I had done my morning expelation earlier, but apparently there was a round two. There's no outhouse here. I find it funny, because at the beginning of this trip I'd packed in my backpack 20 sheets of Kleenex, because after all these trips, and all these trails I've done.. I've never been caught short. And I thought, for some reason, maybe I should have that in there - just in case. In hind sight, I should have packed my folding shovel as well, but you know.. the camera bag is already ~60 lbs. I thought 'I'll just have to find a place along the trail' and things seemed ok.. I didn't remember how far the Tree was.. I thought it was maybe half way, but apparently it was only about 30 minutes in. I immediately went trekking off the trail with my zip lock full of Kleenex in my hand. I found a nice rock ledge.. but nothing to sit on.. so I did the squat. Without gory details.. there's an art to defecting in the woods.. and since my target was a rock, the next step after cleaning up was to find a nice stick, move the Kleenex under some leaf litter and bury it the best I could, and well.. smear the remnants on the rock. This would cause it to dry quickly and the environment should do its thing over the next few weeks. And just think, if someone does see it, they'll think it was a bear or something.

Anyhow, That was a huge relief, with the odd waft of 'something' still around the area I returned to where I set my pack down, and set to the work at hand. The Great tree is.. well, great, and unfortunately the area that he's in is one which lends itself to very personal focal lengths in order to capture his greatness. My Prized 70-200 L was too long. My Ultrawide would handle nicely, but it isn't very good at sharpness, and then the old 24-105 L which was shipped to me by mistake when I ordered a standard 24-105 on (insert internet store name) which never got missed.. anyhow, it was used instead of new - but it was an L and pretty awesome.. I got it for basically half price. I digress.. the 24-105MM was the star here.. I wish I had like a 35 Prime but I'm not buying any more lenses for the Canon Platform since I'm intending to flip to Fujifilm Medium Format in the semi-near future. I first laid down under The Great Tree with my ultrawide and did some shots up through the canopy, because he's too tall to fit in any shot I could do, and even taking several and stitching them together would just look weird (I tried that last time). After that, I found a more intimate shot with the 24-105L catching the moss on his base, and the child tree right beside focusing on the little stream. I don't know if that will turn out to well, because the stream is a bit messy with leaves and broken branches, and I try not to interfere with nature too much, plus.. my boots are still moist from Day one. (note to self, get a second pair of boots) I also did a few more shots down the creek and I hope those are good, they look good on the camera and I focus stacked all of the above.. so I've got a bit of processing to do. I was shooting my wrap-up video as a young woman came by and had to stop.. we chatted for a bit, she said the Great Tree was her favorite tree as well. I think with a few more people we can start a cult. She didn't want to give me her contact details for some reason. Anyhow, I waited for her to pass through before packing up and heading back. As it was, The Crack did Crack me. Things I was doing yesterday with ease were getting the big 'nope'. My legs and arms were not reacting as I wished, and anything above just walking normally was becoming quite an ardous task. I headed back to the camp site. My final goal for this trip completed. I noticed with some joy that all the sites leading up to mine are clear, except for the family with the baby, and they are packing up. I set about making a quick lunch - the bag bragging to have 49 grams of protein. Beef Noodle Marinara. Sounds good. It was.. ok.. a bit plain.. also didn't taste salty.. so again, I guess I'm short on salt still. I still have one more sports drink, but I'm saving that for the drive back tomorrow. I've been repositioning my panels quite a bit and now I'm back up to ~25% charge. This is not enough to run the dehumidifier through the night.. but a good safety margin that will allow me to at least use the trailer's lights. The fridge remains disconnected. It got up to 9 degrees in the trailer today, but the food was still quite cold. I'm sitting here writing this with the door open, I've gotten used to the cold for the most part. I only crack the door in the morning and fire up my buddy heater when I'm changing. The sun has been going in and out today.. large white clouds, some gray, the odd snowflake sometimes. I wonder if I should go down to the lake one last time to see if there will be a sunset. I will probably take my time tomorrow, but I'll aim to leave around first light, there's a small black cat who has probably forgotton who I am by now, and I also want to see if I can sneak into the Algonquin Visitor center and pick up another sack of Maple Tea and maybe a copy of the Raven, since the Friends of killarney no longer publish.

P.S. the baby was just replaced by a leaf blower, baby, and yappy little dog, a man who can't split Killarney firewood without sounding like he's chopping down a tree, and a stereo. Suddenly I don't feel like I will be tip-toeing around when I pack up tomorrow.