Wednesday, Trout Lake

Last night the rain finally came, perfect timing as our campfire was dying down. I drifted off to sleep with deep, rolling thunder and rain on the roof.

After wishing Luanne a Happy Birthday this morning, we were sitting watching the day start with blue skies and a slight breeze. Today is sweatshirt weather, going to be in the 70s for a high.

Luanne’s big birthday gift this morning was a beautiful eagle soaring along the shore line right in front of our campsite. It is really, really beautiful here.

I think I’m going to have to do some housecleaning today. After almost a week on the road and a wet, sandy Teddy I think it’s time!

As the day turned out, it probably was the best one all week long, Luanne says it was the perfect birthday. It was just too pretty to clean, so we went to a neighbors campsite where they have Dagger 10.5 kayaks they love and wanted me to try out. I’m sold, and have a bid on ebay for one, we’ll see, hope I can get it to STL and get Saffire rigged for it before Big South Fork.

After using theirs we headed back to our campsite and took a bike ride into town. I needed the computers at the library to get more info on the kayak than my phone could provide. Well, I provided Luanne’s comic relief for the whole darn summer, I couldn’t remember my screen name and then my password, she had a great time laughing at me while I struggled to bid on a kayak. And remember, I’m the woman who bought a motor home on Ebay!!!!!!

There is a cute little coffee shop in Boulder Junction and we had the best cup of coffee I’ve had in a long while. It was really chilly when you were in the shade and riding, but sitting outside in the sun at a table with yellow Provencal table cloths watching the world go by was pretty OK.

When we got back to camp we had lunch, the last of the fish we bought at the flea market. Then I got Teddy strapped into his life jacket and down we went to the lake. Note to Jack...Teddy’s life jacket is macho red!! He sat in the front of the blow up kayak, a little unsteady at the very first but after we paddled a bit he fell asleep in the bottom of the boat! It was a spectacularly beautiful day on the water and he was happy as a clam.

We eventually got cleaned up and went to town to meet Louie and Jeanne for dinner. It was a nice place, good bar and lots of family style food, I ate and drank too much, but it was so much fun! We went to see their house which they built up here about four years ago. It is really, really nice and they went on about coming back in the winter. I can imagine it would be so beautiful sitting in their family room, surrounded by windows, heated floor and blazing pot bellied stove. My kind of winter, but they would want to be out ice fishing on the frozen lake (who could believe this whole lake freezes?!?!?!?!?) skiing, snowshoeing, think I would survive?

Louie gave us a whole pile of wood from his woodpile so we had another fire when we got back to camp. There must have been a million stars overhead, it was a perfect evening for a perfect day.