Hold the S'mores

Well, my dears, this may be my last post for a few days. Today I have a secret mission, (it's no big whoop, I'll tell y'all about it next week) and then we're going camping this weekend.

Now, important note here. Carly does not do "roughing it." Frankly, to me, the fact that I'm going to Mirror Lake Inn and not the Sagamore for my anniversary is roughing it. Kidding. Sort of.

We are going to stay at a little cabin on a quiet little lake. We've been there before (someone in our extended family owns it - I won't bother you with the chain of degrees)

Here's a little sample of what happened the LAST time I went:

We wanted to go down to see the beaver dam – we’d gotten close in the paddle boat the day before but not close enough. Sister in law, to be known as L from now on, went up to the house to get some stuff, yelled “want beers?” and I said yes. “Two?” “Nah”. She put her digital camera in a double ziplock bag (shhhh Mr. Foreshadow, quiet.…) and we hopped in the canoe. She was wearing her bathing suit, I had on my suit, a pair of water shorts, a zip up sweatshirt and a life jacket. At the last minute I set my cap down on a bench at our beach. I couldn’t find my sunglasses anywhere. So off we went.

I was really afraid that I would tip over the canoe, having never been in one (Johnny V is snickering right now). But the nice thing about going with L is that she’s been on the water for so many years that she could explain to me how to paddle the canoe, etc. It wasn’t anywhere NEAR as tippy as I thought it would be.

We got down past the last cabin – out in the middle of the wide open area past the cabins and all of a sudden L said “oh man… listen” -- she could hear the rain coming sideways in to the lake and the storm was coming FAST.

All of a sudden it was on us. DIG! DIG she was screaming – we were laughing hysterically. It was pelting us like needles and I had no hat to protect my face, no sunglasses, nothing. I would have sworn it was hailing – it was COLD.

I was squinting at this little blue spot on a beach up ahead. It was a big barrel. We were aiming for it and going as fast as we could but getting soaked. I was singing this crazy song that I made up about being out on the lake in the rain and it rhymed pretty well for me making it up on the spot. She was laughing at me. It took 5 or 10 minutes to get to shore, with her screaming DIG all the way. And, me laughing hysterically but damn I did row pretty fast because I was afraid it might lightning. We went up on the beach and grabbed our stuff (the beers, towels and camera) and ran for the trees. I had no shoes (ow, ow, ow…) but it was mostly pine needles.

We found a spot where the trees would keep us from getting too much more rain on us, and waited out the storm a while drinking beer and wishing we’d brought THAT SECOND BEER, and then we took a picture of ourselves because we were absolutely soaked and it was so funny. It was a good thing the camera was in TWO baggies because it would have gotten ruined otherwise.

L said that if there had been lightning, her brother would have come to get us in his little red speed boat right away, but since he knew she would know a few places where to “hide” the storm out they probably weren’t too worried (my son thought I was dead but L's husband knew she would manage the situation; he cracked a joke about “well if you hadn’t come back by 7 pm we would have sent the red boat…")

We went back to the boat when things had pretty much let up. No reason not to keep going! We headed toward the beaver dam and when we were almost there we saw a crane. (You know, tall bird…) We drifted in as close as we could and then got a couple of pictures as he flew off into the tree. The battery was dying on L’s digital so we were hoping we’d get a few more shots. We didn’t see the loons at all.

We made it to the beaver dam and took pictures of each other in front of it. Then we headed out to the other side of the peninsula where we’d hidden – over to where the inlet to the lake is. There’s a rock that looks like a sleeping elephant. We went way in past that to the mouth of the lake and got as close as we could. It was beautiful and I was proud of myself – I didn’t knock us out of the canoe, and I was doing pretty well steering, digging in, etc.

On our way back it looked like it was going to rain again – oh man!!! We pulled as hard as we could to get back to “our side” of the lake and then went along the shore.

So we got a few MORE beers (seeing a trend here? beers, plenty of ‘em) and waded a little. We saw a beautiful rainbow over the island where we had hung out.


So, that's the type of thing I'll be doing this weekend... have a good one everyone. I'll be thinking of you, and you, but especially you.