[If you want the beginning of the story, read part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here, part 4 here, and part 5 here].

I slept reasonably well on our second night of the trip despite the odd angle and lumpy ground. While my friends were up hearing sounds in the night, I only heard them talking about it – probably because I was close to water dripping that shielded wildlife sounds. They thought they heard seals on the tideline, but later, when we visited bears at Pack Creed, we would learn that they were definitely hearing the grunting sounds of young bears.

I also discovered in the morning that, while the tide was quite low upon waking, it had come higher than expected – into the vestibule of one of my companions. Fortunately she thought that it was a lower tide than it actually was, so she was less worried – though she didn’t get any sleep as she waited until the tide was clearly receding.

Over breakfast I brought up my continuing on the trip, and we made a decision that we were all comfortable with my continuing. I was still emotionally raw in the morning, perhaps stunned by my emotional reaction the day prior when I found myself suddenly in rumbling ocean. But the morning was calm, and we were relatively close to our base camp.

Shortly after leaving camp, it began to rain, and rain, and rain. We paddled onward, again going from point to point on the land. It took us nearly 3 hours to make it to camp as we again paddled against current and wind. This worked out in our favor because the rain passed and we enjoyed delightful sunny afternoon at a lovely campsite.

Our site featured an accessible beach, a protected cove, extensive flat areas for camping, and it was in thick forest that provided shelter from the rain when it was raining.

We bathed, set up camp, read, and generally enjoyed ourselves with nowhere we had to be and no connection to the worries of the world, and we all settled in early for a long sleep.