The exhausted body or brain is like a machine that has run too long without being oiled. It goes with reluctance and with damaging wear and tear. But when we are thoroughly rested, the motives that before were unable to move us, now set us going with the greatest facility.
After the rest and quiet of a week, I began to feel an impulse to do something or to go somewhere; and a short debate settled that I would take a trip by sail and oar to the upper lake. As I did not intend to hurry and might be gone two or three days, I laid in a stock of provisions accordingly; with such cooking apparatus as a coffee pot and frying pan. Nowhere is a cup of coffee, a slice of ham, crackers and cheese so relishable as when they satisfy real thirst and hunger alongside a camp-fire of dry sticks. Then perhaps I might shoot a duck or hook a croppy. At night the sail stretched over a fishing pole could be formed into a shelter tent, something like the “dog tents” Uncle Sam gave us for shelter in the southern campaigns in the early sixties. In short I intended to make a regular cruise, and as my boat was named Sally Ann, this trip should be known in history as the cruise of the Sally Ann.
It was a fine morning when, all things ready, I hoisted sail. The wind was from the southeast and I started off before it at an exhilarating speed, steering northwest. In a short time I came abreast of Big Island, when turning west skirting its north shore, I soon got becalmed, the island cutting off the wind. I was obliged to take the oars, but as I dallied and loitered along, it was a full hour before I passed the island and caught my breeze again. I was here steering southwest across the wind and heading for the narrows, and the canal leading into the upper lake. Nothing can exceed the beauty of this lake, no matter at what point the view is taken. At this place looking northeast over the stern of the boat, the village of Wayzata partly obscured by Spirit Island, appeared as if seated in the water half a mile away, though in reality it is five miles. On the southeast within a mile, was the Lake Park hotel and beyond it, half a mile further and across the entrance to Gideon’s Bay, a part of Excelsior could be seen climbing its picturesque hills, while along the piers at the bottom of their slopes, were numerous steam and sailing crafts of various kinds, besides a fleet of row boats.