We watched Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, then went back out on the deck to stargaze for a while before calling it a night. I heard some soft rustling in the brush below us down the hill. We looked out and saw a large doe moving slowly through the foliage. She was just minding her own business, eating the grass, in no hurry to go anywhere.
The sky was clear and the stars were magnificent. I wish I knew a few more constellations. I saw the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia but I’m sure there were a lot more up there I just couldn’t pick out. We gazed for a while but didn’t see any satellites. We see them on our deck all the time. I guess they don’t soar over this part of Wisconsin.
Can you refer to the state as ‘Sconnie’ or just the people? I’ll have to ask my son-in-law. He’s a Sconnie.
I slept in this morning. By the time I got up, at 8:30, Jay had already been out in the canoe, catching fish. He woke me up when he got up just before dawn; the doe we’d seen the night before was back: she was feeding her fawn just a few feet from the cabin. Lovely! He went out to wet a line, I fell back asleep.
What finally woke me up was the smell of frying bacon. Jay had made enough bacon for both of us and offered to cook me some eggs but I was more than happy with a bagel and the bacon. We made coffee with the last of the potable water. We should have gotten the big case. We hadn’t planned on using most of it to douse a fire but no one plans to light the deck on fire, do they? Louis L’Amour said that most ‘adventures’ are really just the results of bad planning and I believe he’s correct. Always buy the big case of water.
Breakfast was uneventful.
After I ate, I washed my face and brushed my teeth in the kitchen sink because the bathroom sink doesn’t seem to have any water supply. The toilet flushes and the shower seems to work (I turned it on but haven’t taken one) but the sink: nada. I sunscreened all over and we took the canoe out for a tour of the lake.
It’s small, peaceful and very pretty. No beaches; many of the cabins have docks that extend out past the weeds and shore grasses, a few have swimming docks anchored further out but I’d say this was mostly a fishing lake. Lots of reeds, weeds and water lilies. Its very beautiful! We paddled into a narrow cove with no cabins and tons of water lilies. We floated along and saw some sort of aquatic creature moving over the lily pads close to shore. We were too far from it to tell exactly what it was; it was long, brown and moved too quickly to be a mother duck with several ducklings. There aren’t , well I’m pretty surethere aren’t any gators in Wisconsin. We paddled across the lake and got up close to a pair of loons we’d heard arguing at sunset. They seem to have made up: they dove and swam close to each other for the ten minutes we floated watching them.
After an hour or so, we paddled back home. We pulled the canoe up onto shore and Jay picked up his line. I watched as he cast several times but got no bites.
Then he got his lure stuck on some weeds about fifteen feet from the dock. He tried to work it free but it was in there good.
“Here, hold this.” He handed me his rod. “I’m gonna take the canoe out and see if I can’t free it from there.” It was a really good lure: he didn’t want to lose it.
I took the rod while he shoved the canoe back along the dock and got in.
“Something’s tugging at it.” I said. Like a dope.
“That’s a fish!” He said. “Reel it in!”
“What?” I turned to look at him. Because I’m that muchof an outdoorsman.
“Hang on! Reel it in! That’s a big one!” He was twisted around in the canoe, watching the line.
“Oh. Umm…” I fiddled with the reel.
“It only turns one way, reel it in!” he was getting excited and his twisted position had the canoe tilting dangerously toward the dock.
“Yeah. Okay.” I reeled.
“FASTER!!” he instructed. I reeled faster. Now I could see a large chunk of seaweed, along with a large fish, at the end of the line. The rod was bent nearly double.
“KEEP YOUR ROD UP! PULL HIM IN! LOOK AT THAT, IT’S A NORTHERN!! KEEP YOUR ROD UP!!” At this point, he scrambled out of the canoe, nearly tipping himself into the water. I dropped the rod and grabbed the canoe just before it flipped over and Jay dove onto the dock, catching the rod just before the fish took it out to sea.
Statistics show that most people who drown had no intention of going in the water. I wonder what statistics say about people who had no intention of fishing?
Disaster was averted once again as Jay took a large fish off the hook and added him to the bass he’d caught earlier.
He fished for another hour. Then we headed off to the corner store to get more water and a few other things we would need for an evening fish fry. Our plan was to find a place to have lunch, buy supplies and head back to the cabin. That plan didn’t work when we found that none of the nearby grills opened before two o’clock. We were hungry now.
Plan B was to eat the hot dogs we’d brought with us to the cabin. Jay had picked them up at Pekarna’s meat market in Jordan when he drove through the other day. They were delicious.
We did stop at the corner store, though. The only non-alcoholic beverage left in the cabin was milk and I’d already had a large glass of that so we really needed to get some water. The corner store was out of vegetable oil (!?) so the plan to fry our fresh fish was off the table for the moment, too.
Now it’s a warm, quiet, partly sunny afternoon. Jay is taking a nap and I’m on the deck, writing this and planning to read my book, right after I do the dishes from lunch. Doing dishes by hand in tepid water, what fun! Not quite as much fun as nearly burning down the deck but Jay cleaned that whole mess up earlier so it’s about time I do something constructive around here.
Aside from showing Jay how to catch fish, that is.