8:45 am. People have been coming and going, and last night we slept ten (four on our houseboat and six on the other). That's the lowest number we'll have, as David (who left us Tuesday) will be back with some friends tomorrow, for a happenin' final weekend.

12:35 pm. We've unstaked and moved to a different cove. This one seems fully protected, hidden from the body of the lake and all the passing watercraft. The other houseboat is getting pumped out and gassed up, so until they rejoin us it's perfectly peaceful here. I can hear little more than the crickets on the bank and the stretching of the ropes. Just after we got here, a family of grebes, a mother and four babies, came swimming slowly by. They didn't seem to mind us, and they made their way out of the cove at their own leisurely pace.

7:20 pm. We took a cruise up the Sacramento River arm of the lake this afternoon, just to see what there was to see. And we saw a lot of other boaters, and swimmers and skiers, plus a bald eagle and some great blue herons. We still hadn't seen any four-legged wildlife on the whole trip, until a pair of young deer walked over the hill into our cove. At first they were spooked by the dogs, but after our in-house kennel master quieted the dogs, the deer came quite close to the houseboat. They ate some of our bread, but their goal was a drink of water from the lake. They eventually got their drink and moved on, around the point to the next cove.