9:45 am. When I said yesterday that it hadn’t rained on us at Shasta Lake, I didn’t mean that it hadn’t rained at all, or that it wouldn’t rain. Shortly after I went to bed last night, it started. It rained hard through the night. I slept well at the beginning and end, but through the middle I woke up every so often, and I could always hear the rain pounding on the roof of the houseboat.

And it had obviously rained hard before we ever got here, because we had to wade through thick red clay mud to get from the parking lot down to the dock. It stuck to everything, in big sticky globs, so that none of us could get on the boat until we took off our shoes. It’s a good thing I brought an extra pair of Levi’s, because the clay mud was stuck to the bottom cuff and halfway up my leg. I borrowed a plastic bag to keep the dirty pair in, so that the red menace wouldn’t spread.

But it’s beautiful here this morning. The clouds are slowly going away, leaving behind blue sky to complement the blue water. We are tied up in a cove next to a small dam, and there is fresh snow on a couple of the higher peaks that surround us. We’ve had a hearty breakfast, Eric has gone off on a hike, and I think it’s once again time to relax. I could get good at that, with a little more practice.

10:45 pm. I did spend a good deal of the day lying around doing nothing more than reading and sleeping and, uh, lying around. But, as usual, I started to come to life when the sun went down and the wine started flowing. We moved from one part of the lake to another, and we had a dice game with friends from another houseboat, after which we all sat back and watched Elf on the DVD player. (So you know this isn’t your everyday houseboat.) It was another good day on the lake, and this will be our last night here.