We decided we’d skip lunch on days two and three. Three of us split one packet of risotto for dinner on day two. The package said it held two servings.
I had thought we only needed seven packs of backpacker-style meals. Each had two servings, and with additional snacks and a bag of brownies I figured we’d be fine.
I didn’t anticipate that we’d be extra hungry from all the exercise we were doing.
By the last full day, as we started our journey out, my brother and I were fighting like we were teenagers. As we paddled, we could hear our stomachs growl. At one point I felt like I was going to pass out under the hot sun, so we broke out the last of our granola bars and a tube of peanut butter.
Again, we were thwarted from finding a campsite where we wanted to stay on Birch Lake. Another group of paddlers raced us across the lake and decided to hold down an empty campsite while the rest of their group looked for, presumably, better ones. We moved on, but other frustrated paddlers yelled at them that it wasn’t a parking space they could save.
We found an open campsite around the bend. Tensions were high. We had paddled miles under the blazing sun and we were hungry. One wrong word could set off an argument.