October 21: Stump Lake

Is it any wonder why they called it Stump Lake?  Not really.  A hundred beavers the size of bears had once roamed the place, taking down the biggest trees first and schewing the sides, face-up, flat as a board.  If someone were to come in and rotate these board 180 degrees, they'd chew the other side too, then you could ship these to a hardware store and sell them.

I wandered through the wreckage forever looking for the "Stump Lake" camp site that showed up on the map somewhere around the bend.  I decided I was intelligent, but just not intelligent enough to solve the riddle of the lake -- until a couple bends later I finally found it just before the sun set, and froze my fingers writing about the experience so you could read it.

The thing is, the real beaver story comes later.

Day 122 ended: Stump Lake Campground