The morning brought our first trail test of the alcohol stove we hastily constructed the previous day in response to fuel canister unavailability and the stove performed admirably. We enjoyed hot coffee, tea and bagels with cream cheese, then broke camp and were on the trail before eight (the long daylight hours have led to later nights and concomitant later mornings, so what was once a late start for us has somehow become an accomplishment to celebrate).

Lunch lined up well with a cascading waterfall. The kids chose to enjoy their sandwiches on a slippery ledge, while Mama Bear was busy constructing new insoles out of fragments of a foam sleeping mat. She was so happy with the comfort of her first pair of (now discontinued) New Balance Minimus shoes, which lasted almost a thousand miles, that she thought any pair of a Minimus shoes would be equally comfortable.

Mama Bear had fallen victim to secundum quid (the fallacy of the hasty generalization). My favorite example of this fallacy was when the kids came home from preschool wanting to know why everyone called a kid in RobinHood’s class Downtown David Brown. Mama Bear responded that that was his nickname, a response the kids accepted without question. But from then on (for several months) they thought that someone’s nickname was simply their real name with the word “Downtown” affixed to it. So we had Downtown Nathan Kallin and Downtown Miss Kate (his teacher at the time). Of course, concluding that all thruhikers are smelly after meeting only two would be similarly fallacial, thus demonstrating the difference between fallacy and falsity.

Anyway, Mama Bear was as pleased with her new insoles as she was with the new stove and we continued on. We encountered a well-placed public beach where we avoided unnecessary heat-of-the-day exertions. Instead, we lounged in the sun, swam in the lake, showered in the (hot) showers and ate ice-cream at the snack bar. We also enjoyed the Saturday afternoon people-watching immensely. But concluding the day at such a crowded place seemed untenable. And as any logic-lover knows, the best course of action if you find yourself reaching untenable conclusions is to vacate the premises So we escaped the crowds by heading back to the woods to enjoy some primo pasta (another stove success) by a solitary sunset at a private campsite up on the ridge line.