![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingGreetings from Minnesota!
My trip went fairly well, all things considered. We were late leaving Ithaca on Tuesday morning because the plane was slightly overweight and had to burn fuel for several minutes before the air traffic controllers would let it take off. Then we had to taxi for what seemed like forever after landing in Detroit, which meant I had an incredibly tight connection and basically ran through the airport from one gate to the other. Fortunately I know the Detroit airport pretty well by now, so I didn't waste any time trying to figure out which way I needed to go. I reached the Twin Cities a bit ahead of schedule and had a two hour layover there, and reached Bemidji slightly early as well, whereupon I met Mom and Dad, we drove to Cass Lake, and headed out to Star Island.
I spent the afternoon alternately doing crosswords (with participation from Mom) and taking a much-needed nap. Dinner was corned beef (with carrots, onions, and potatoes) and green salad. After dinner we did more crosswords, I got my laptop set up and connected to the cabin's wireless network, and went to bed around 1:30am.
Today (because it is still Wednesday by Central Daylight Time, even though my journal and computer are still set to Eastern Daylight Time) I got up at 9:30am, had some cereal for breakfast, and then Dad and I headed out to do trail maintenance at noon. This is a very high water year, so portions of the path around the east shore of Lake Windigo (the lake within Star Island) are extremely swampy/muddy, and the boardwalk section was soaked and unable to dry because of overhanging grasses. So we cut a LOT of shrubbery and grass, scraped mud and moss off the boards, and generally created a clear path where before there had been only a faint and overgrown memory of a trail. Tomorrow or Friday we will carry down some old dock boards to lay across the worst mud patches, and Dad will probably bring some weedkiller to spray on the patches of poison ivy he identified. (Dad is hypersensitive to poison ivy, so he wages a one-man war on the stuff every summer. Mom is not sensitive to poison ivy at all, and so far as Vicky and I can tell, we inherited Mom's reaction instead of Dad's... though any time we got remotely close to the stuff as kids, Dad swooped in and immediately washed the suspected area of contact, so it's not like we have hard proof either way. *wry*)
Mom and Dad headed in to Bemidji to buy some clothes and groceries in the afternoon, leaving me and Dottie (their dog) to our own devices. I worked on another crossword puzzle and surfed the web a bit, in between bouts of sitting outside with Dottie and watching red squirrels and passing motor boats. They returned around 5:30pm, at which point we promptly began preparing dinner -- steak, corn on the cob, and another green salad. After dinner we headed down to visit the Belts, since they had invited us to a game night. We talked a while, and then played Farkle, which is a dice game where the person who gets the most points over 10,000 wins. I came second.
I can hear waves lapping against the shore as I type. The wind has swung toward the east and picked up after dark, and it's rustling busily through the trees. It's funny how I live most of my life away from the lake, but these sounds don't feel strange. They feel like home.
And now I am going to read for a while before going to bed. :-)
My trip went fairly well, all things considered. We were late leaving Ithaca on Tuesday morning because the plane was slightly overweight and had to burn fuel for several minutes before the air traffic controllers would let it take off. Then we had to taxi for what seemed like forever after landing in Detroit, which meant I had an incredibly tight connection and basically ran through the airport from one gate to the other. Fortunately I know the Detroit airport pretty well by now, so I didn't waste any time trying to figure out which way I needed to go. I reached the Twin Cities a bit ahead of schedule and had a two hour layover there, and reached Bemidji slightly early as well, whereupon I met Mom and Dad, we drove to Cass Lake, and headed out to Star Island.
I spent the afternoon alternately doing crosswords (with participation from Mom) and taking a much-needed nap. Dinner was corned beef (with carrots, onions, and potatoes) and green salad. After dinner we did more crosswords, I got my laptop set up and connected to the cabin's wireless network, and went to bed around 1:30am.
Today (because it is still Wednesday by Central Daylight Time, even though my journal and computer are still set to Eastern Daylight Time) I got up at 9:30am, had some cereal for breakfast, and then Dad and I headed out to do trail maintenance at noon. This is a very high water year, so portions of the path around the east shore of Lake Windigo (the lake within Star Island) are extremely swampy/muddy, and the boardwalk section was soaked and unable to dry because of overhanging grasses. So we cut a LOT of shrubbery and grass, scraped mud and moss off the boards, and generally created a clear path where before there had been only a faint and overgrown memory of a trail. Tomorrow or Friday we will carry down some old dock boards to lay across the worst mud patches, and Dad will probably bring some weedkiller to spray on the patches of poison ivy he identified. (Dad is hypersensitive to poison ivy, so he wages a one-man war on the stuff every summer. Mom is not sensitive to poison ivy at all, and so far as Vicky and I can tell, we inherited Mom's reaction instead of Dad's... though any time we got remotely close to the stuff as kids, Dad swooped in and immediately washed the suspected area of contact, so it's not like we have hard proof either way. *wry*)
Mom and Dad headed in to Bemidji to buy some clothes and groceries in the afternoon, leaving me and Dottie (their dog) to our own devices. I worked on another crossword puzzle and surfed the web a bit, in between bouts of sitting outside with Dottie and watching red squirrels and passing motor boats. They returned around 5:30pm, at which point we promptly began preparing dinner -- steak, corn on the cob, and another green salad. After dinner we headed down to visit the Belts, since they had invited us to a game night. We talked a while, and then played Farkle, which is a dice game where the person who gets the most points over 10,000 wins. I came second.
I can hear waves lapping against the shore as I type. The wind has swung toward the east and picked up after dark, and it's rustling busily through the trees. It's funny how I live most of my life away from the lake, but these sounds don't feel strange. They feel like home.
And now I am going to read for a while before going to bed. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2014-08-14 05:12 pm (UTC)