And The Day Flew By

Northwoods Journal

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Yea! No rushing around this morning.  And it was warm enough to have our coffee on the new porch – well, I had to bundle up just a little.  There were three blue jays waiting for their peanuts first thing.  Not much other bird activity except the ruby-throated hummingbird and a few rose-breasted grosbeaks.

Mark cooked 2 pounds of bacon on the Coleman stove.  That took a while.  My plan was to make Belgian waffles but in my haste I forgot to spray the waffle iron with cooking spray so the first two waffles stuck like glue.  I practically needed a chisel to get them out!  So, I resorted to plan B, pancakes.  It was nearly 10:30 before we were done with breakfast.

The downside of having a slow morning means the rest of the day seems to fly by in a blink.  The weather was perfect, the sky a clear, dazzling blue.  Mark, Katy and I ran into town to visit the coffee shop and also made a stop at a realty office.  We are seriously considering putting our place on the market and looking for something a bit nicer – you know, with hot running water.  Don’t know if that will ever happen.  We’re pretty picky about where we want to be and spoiled with our place here being surrounded by trees.  We like our privacy and not being able to see our neighbors.

We had a hot dog roast for lunch and then it was off to take the dogs for a walk.  Daisy has been seriously ticked off because she is not getting her normal two hikes a day.  Mark and I, Katy and Nathan along with all five dogs loaded into the FJ and we drove down to Sportsmen Dam Rd. and found a trail that makes a loop.  The doxies can’t do really long walks with their short little legs.  It was a perfect day for walking in the woods, but no wildlife to be seen.  Too many motorcycles and ATV’s out on the trails this weekend.  We did see a couple sets of bear tracks, side-by-side on the trail.

Mark had heard you could do off-roading on the trails at Camp Grayling so Pete called to confirm that was allowed.  When he found out it was, we headed over that way for a fun adventure of 4-wheeling and hill climbing.  There are trails everywhere over there and some pretty steep hills.  We found one and as soon as we drove toward it I told Mark there was no way I was riding up that hill!  He didn’t think it was even possible to make it up there, so we hung back and watched Pete try.  It took him three tries to get to the top.  By then Katy had gotten out and walked back down, not really up for that much adventure!  Mark didn’t even bother to try with the FJ, afraid of breaking an axel or something.  He and I walked a less steep trail to the top and were there when Pete and Nathan came bounding to the crest, whooping and hollering like banshees.  It was a fun couple of hours and a place we will definitely go to again, as long as they aren’t doing Army maneuvers!

Trying to make it up a steep hill at Camp Grayling.

You can’t really tell the steepness of the hill from the photos I took.

On the way back home we stopped in town for our ice cream.  Dessert before dinner!  It was pretty far past dinnertime by then.  The ice cream was delicious and the homemade waffle cones – yummy!!  The guys still wanted their bacon cheeseburgers but I didn’t have room for anything else.

The mosquitoes were too bad for having a campfire tonight and everyone was worn out from all our fun and sun.  We did hear an owl when we put the dogs out one last time before bed, but that was it for the night sounds.