Rockin’ It Out

Northwoods Journal

Sunday, August 11, 2013

The barred owl was our alarm clock, waking us up at 4:40 a.m.  Ruby really does not like owls!  Every time she hears one hooting, she freaks out.  Thankfully we were all able to go back to sleep.  It was just a bit chilly overnight, sleeping with the window open, and the sky was pretty cloudy when we got up, but the day turned out to be a fine one.

Since we had to go home today, we decided to not rush around, to wait and leave late afternoon and hopefully miss some of the worst traffic.  That meant we could enjoy our morning.  Mark wanted pancakes and bacon for breakfast, so he made the bacon on the Coleman stove and I made the pancakes inside.  After breakfast we finally had to tackle the dishes.  We tended to a few indoor and outdoor chores.  Mark wanted to mow and almost couldn’t get the mower started – the brand new mower we just bought the last time we came up!  Thankfully he finally did get it to start.

Necessities taken care of, we set out to take the dogs for a short walk.  We went up the power lines across the road and then cut through the woods where they cleared last year.  The one good thing about clear cutting is that they leave some new trails to walk!  We came out on the trail/driveway that leads to “Wayne’s World” (a travel trailer tucked wayyyyy back in the woods) and then back out to our road.  I laughed with Mark, remembering how walking that trail used to seem like such a long hike, now it doesn’t seem like anything at all!  Well, except for that first hill we have to climb, which gets me every time, but after that it seems easy peasy lemon squeezy.

We left the dogs at the trailer and went off to hunt more rocks for around our fire pit.  Thursday evening when we walked the dogs we came across this pudding stone in the middle of the ATV trail.  If you aren’t familiar, a pudding stone is a quartz-like rock with flecks of colored rock within it – usually the flecks are red, orange, deep maroon or white.  Anyway, they are quite prized around here.  This one was embedded really good in the trail so Mark had said we could come back and dig it out sometime over the weekend, so that’s where we decided to start our rock hunting.  He hadn’t brought his big shovel, or a crow bar, just the fold up Army issue entrenching tool.  We found the pudding stone with little trouble, but getting that puppy out of the dirt was another matter entirely!  From the looks of what was on the surface, I expected a nice-size rock, maybe football size.  No.  Mark dug and dug and dug, creating a trench around and around and could not get that rock to budge!  Several groups of ATV’ers drove by, looking at us like we were insane!  Mark ended up with a huge blister in the middle of his hand and still that rock, I mean boulder was not moving.  (I really should have gotten a photo.  I had my camera, but for some reason it just didn’t seem right!)  Laughing, I told Mark it would be hilarious if he dug that whole thing out and the only piece of “pudding” was that one on the very top that had been sticking up out of the dirt!  Finally I convinced him to cry uncle.  He fought the rock and the rock won!  We filled the trench back up and drove on to another spot.  We followed the ATV trail across Voyer Lake Rd. toward Nickerson Valley and found lots of good rocks.  The Lord gave us a “double blessing for our former troubles” and we found many more pudding stones, ones that did not have to be dug out of the dirt!

It was lunchtime when we returned to the trailer.  Mark made a fire and made us pizza sandwiches in the sandwich maker.  It was nice to sit out on the porch and eat.  The only meal we ate out there the whole weekend!  After lunch it was time to face the fact that we had to start packing up.  It was 3 o’clock when we pulled out of our driveway.  We saw two spotted fawns next to M33 as we headed south.  There is one area along the road north of Comins where the sumac grow all along the road bank.  For about a mile the sumac were all bright red and orange.  Too much like fall for early August!

Traffic was horrendous.  That’s the reason we rarely come home on Sunday.  Now we start counting down the days to the long Labor Day weekend.