Murray River Day 2 - somewhere on the Murray River, Victoria

Last night's sleep was okay. Still woke up continually throughout the night. I always seem to get the best sleep in the morning before it's time to wakeup. Paddled with Jack today, giving up my solo canoe. We like to play these games to see if we can canoe between really narrow logs/branches/obstacles. Most of the time we make it, but we did get stuck pretty bad three times were it was king of awkward and embarrassing. Poor Ruth and Chris paddled solo and had to battle this strong breeze making it hard and tiring, but they were good troopers. When we stopped for lunch our leader explained how the river moved itself. Over time it moves the earth and jumps curves - kind of like creating a shortcut. We got to see this giant ditch that was grown over with trees and plants which at one time used to be where the river flowed. Today was pretty easy, stopped for camp early and set up our tent/canoe creation. Instead of setting up tents we use a big tarp and set it up over the canoes so we can all sleep together - "tarpology" as Pom calls it. I like having a small group, other groups we pass seem so massive - almost double our number…or maybe we just passed two groups at once…I think my favorite part is at night with debriefing. That's when we reflect on the day, what we like, what we learned, and then we head into group chats about personal backgrounds, ambitions, goals, and personal views - sitting around a campfire chatting and listening to nature. Most of the canoeing is done in silence, so this trip is pretty chill - much different from Alps where we're killing ourselves trying to climb mountains. The weather has been great too, but our leader spotted some cirrus clouds so apparently some crazy weather may be coming in - possibly rain. It was definitely very windy today. And one thing we can't escape are the flies - they're EVERYWHERE!It gets to the point where just brush them off your fact, letting them crawl over your legs. I think I counted twelve on me at one time.