Not a Picture-Taking Kind of Day

Northwoods Journal
Saturday, July 5, 2014

Today will be a fairly short post as we didn’t do much “adventuring” in the northwoods today and I hardly touched my camera.

I guess all of us, dogs included, are feeling our age. Yesterday they let us sleep until eight and this morning it was 8:30. Even after we got up, we weren’t moving any too fast. Mark didn’t even feel like making breakfast, and he always loves cooking breakfast up here!

Finally around ten I suggested we go into town and get something for breakfast at The Baklava Shop but by time we got there we were too late for cinnamon rolls and/or turnovers so we had to make do with baklava and shortbread. Although tasty, they aren’t exactly the breakfast of champions. There were lots of garage sales signs out so we spent the rest of the morning hunting down sales with a final stop back in town for gas, worms and water.

It was 1 o’clock before we returned to the cabin and by then my baklava had worn off and I was ready for some real food. Mark made us grilled sandwiches and we ate out on the porch. It was truly a PERFECT day as far as weather – not a cloud in the brilliant blue sky and almost too warm in the sun. Mark has commented several times on how surprisingly quiet it’s been for a holiday weekend. Even the people on the corner have been pretty quiet and there are only a couple of vehicles there this time, with a few ATV’s.

We had several bird visitors today including a couple of chickadees but they didn’t hang around long. The nuthatches are my best bird food customers right now, along with several hairy woodpeckers, purple finches, a few mourning doves and a chipping sparrow or two. The blue jay made a very brief appearance, too. I guess they are all getting plenty of food in the woods right now and don’t need my feeders. I’ve also seen the gray squirrel and a black-morph gray squirrel hanging around and there are plenty of chipmunks about.

I made a bowl of macaroni salad and messed with yesterday’s post, which took forever since I kept losing the wi-fi signal. By time I was done, Daisy was laying around with her depressed look, letting us know we were taking too long before giving her some exercise. Mark’s been wanting Dairy Queen so we decided to head toward Hillman, hike the dogs, and end at the DQ. We took the berry buckets just in case we decided to do a little blueberry picking on the way.

It was hot hiking in the sun and I don’t think any of us, well except maybe Daisy and Ruby, were up to going very far. We saw one deer and that was it for the wildlife. When we got to DQ I wasn’t even hungry for ice cream but I got a Blizzard anyway and only ate half of it. We always get a baby cup of vanilla ice cream for the dogs and this time they even put a little dog cookie on top! The beagles are always a big hit eating their ice cream from the spoon and waiting so patiently for their bites. I really should have gotten a picture of that!

Mark drove the ATV trails almost all the way back to our place, so it was a really pleasant drive. He announced about half-way home that he really didn’t feel like berry picking and I laughed and told him I didn’t, either! We really are feeling our age. LOL

For dinner, Mark built a small camp fire and I roasted us some smoked sausage hot dogs. We ate them, along with our macaroni salad, out on the porch. It’s really amazing how many meals we eat outside up here. We certainly don’t do that at home! Mark commented on the wind that had kicked up, coming out of the south east, and that it probably would make fishing difficult. (The wind is ushering in poorer weather for tomorrow, I believe.)

We headed to the lake around 7:30 and Mark was right about the wind. Fishing turned out to be a huge disappointment. The wind was too strong, I couldn’t cast where I wanted, the canoe was moving all over the place. There was nothing about it that was fun. I tried taking pictures of the loons, but they aren’t that good due to all the movement going on.  This was about the best one.

Loon swimming on the choppy lake.

The best photos I took were a view of the lakeside and the sunset.

Our favorite fishing hole.

Sunset on the lake.

I only got one bite the whole time and that was a tiny baby bass. Mark caught one keeper but that was it so he ended up throwing it back. I got so disgusted with not being able to fish or take photos that I resorted to playing Candy Crush on my phone. Sad. We did see the kingbirds and a kingfisher but when I tried to take photos of the kingbirds my camera flashed all kinds of dire red warning signals at me – not enough light, too much movement, etc.

Even Mark finally got tired and bored so we headed for shore. We had time for a camp fire when we got home but we both decided to make it an “early” night. No staying up until midnight this time! (I guess 11 p.m. is considered early?) Maybe we can rustle up some more exciting adventures tomorrow.