BORS Weekend

The BORS finally made it up to the Dam Cabin. I've been trying to get our friends up there all summer with no success. We finally talked the Eides and Jim and Paula into visiting. I think a fun time was had by all. I know Dar and I had fun.

Nothing terribly exciting happened. It was just a nice warm fall weekend to sit and relax by the lake and chat and reminisce about this and that and the good old days. Bob and Kathleen came up with me on Saturday morning so we had a chance to take a little tour of the lake in the party barge and make a short stop at the lake tavern for a beer or two.

Jim and Paula came up after work just in time for some hors d'oeuvres and dinner. We had a nice fire in the fire pit and watched the moonlight dancing on the waves. It was just windy enough to keep any hearty bugs and smoke out of our faces.

Sunday morning was a little cooler and windier, but not too fallish. The trees are starting to turn, but we haven't had a frost yet. We had coffee and nosh on the barge in the morning sun. Bob and Kathleen left after brunch. His back was hurting him. Jim and Paula took a tour of the surrounding neighborhood and snapped some photos. We were all gone by mid afternoon. It was a nice weekend with good friends. I hope we can do it again soon!


(BORS - the infamous softball team we organized and played in thirty years ago: the Burnt Out Relics of the Sixties!)

Summer's End

Summer officially ends this Tuesday at four PM or thereabouts. Time to get caught up on end-of-the-summer memories!

We paid a short visit to the cabin this weekend. We got some free hostas from a friend, and we had to get them in the ground before they died. We drove up during the afternoon on Saturday. Neither of us wanted to do any gardening when we got up there so we had a glass of wine and some hors d'oeuvres and took the party barge out to do some fishing instead. I started to back the boat out and got maybe ten feet before it quit. Luckily the wind was strong and from the south so it blew us right back to the dock. We had a reserve tank of gas in the garage so we filled it up and tried again. That was lucky! We might have been stuck out there for days!

We enjoyed sitting in the middle of the lake fishing. The wind died down and the sun set in pink splendor to the west. We only caught two crappies, but they were big enough to keep, clean and eat the next day for lunch.

Sunday morning we got a lot done. We got our plantings in. I mowed the lawn and Dar cleaned up the beach. It's Fall and there's a lot of dead effluvium in the water right now. Lots of snails and weeds and muck. It's a losing battle trying to keep up with it all, but it does make our small little beach area look a little more inviting.

I decided I was going to take a break and cast a jig and minnow out to catch one more fish. It immediately got caught on a weed so I pulled the canoe down to the shore, and Dar and I started paddling out to unhook it. Louis, our dog was going crazy! He was running up and down the dock barking and whimpering. On our way back to the shore he all of a sudden jumped into the water!

Louis hates the water. When someone runs water in the tub he hides under the bed because he thinks he's going to have to take a bath! He hit our lake with a bellyflop and sank. Dar read an article recently about dogs. They don't know that they're supposed to hold their breath under water so they drown easily if their heads go under. I knew as soon as Louis hit the water that Darlene was going to bail out of the canoe to try to save him. My life didn't pass before my eyes, but I did see myself being tipped into the water after her and emerging a sopping mess with lake crap all over me!

Somehow Dar got out of the canoe without tipping it! And a miracle even greater than that, Louis surfaced and started dog-paddling toward shore. We both yelled out in surprise, "Louis! You can swim!" He got to shore all by himself! It was one of the proudest moments of my life. "That's my boy!"

Then he started running up and down the shoreline like a madman. If there wasn't terror in his eyes then at least it was utter confusion. If he could have talked he probably would have said, "What the HELL just happened to me!" He was a dripping wet Leo Bloom streaking around the yard yelling, "I'm hysterical! I'm in pain . . . and I'm hysterical! I'm WET . . . and I'm in PAIN . . . and I'm HYSTERICAL!"

It was definitely the highlight of the weekend!

Two weeks ago we went up with Tyler and his friend Peter. We had fun, I hope they did. The water was a little messy then too, so we drove the boat over to a calmer part of the lake and swam. We also went fishing and caught a few: some crappies, some sunnies, and a giant whale that bit through Tyler's line and got away. We kept a few. They were the first fish we've kept, cleaned and eaten this summer! A first!


And, alas, gardening season is over. Dar planted four tomato plants up there. Whether it was the lack of sun or the lack of watering or the lack of TLC, our crop was dismal. We got two edible fruit and they were about the size of large grapes! I'm sure we'll try again next year. We're sadists!

End of August

We spent some nice, sunny, but cool days at the cabin in late August. Neighbors and family visited and played with us. The swimming wasn't great and the fishing was awful, but we had fun in spite of it all.




My biggest accomplishment was finally getting Mortimer the Moose hung on the wall. Thank you Andrew and Erin for bringing it all the way from Alaska. It really makes the room look complete!


Our first year of cabin ownership is almost complete. We have learned so much, and have so much more to experience. I'll keep writing in here as new, fun, interesting, or devastating events unfold.

August already!

It's hard to believe that July is over and August is here already. Not a lot has been happening although we did visit the lake just about every weekend since the last blog entry. I guess we'll just have to do some highlights.

The weather has not been great on the weekends. It's been unseasonable cool, and it seems like we've had cloudy, misty, off-and-on showers every weekend.

Three weekends ago we applied Copper Sulfate to the dock area. Linda had come down with a really bad case of swimmer's itch when she was visiting, and after some online research we discovered it's from snails. We got a permit from the DNR and bought some chemical, and hopefully cured that problem for awhile. The treatment doesn't last forever and I'm sure we'll have to do it again next spring, but we feel a little more comfortable having people swim by the dock now. We couldn't go in the water that weekend, so it was a short one for us.

I think the next weekend was cloudy, cool and rainy too. We didn't stay long that weekend either. The crows woke me up one morning. They were squawking and yelling at something. I thought it might be some animal in the lawn outside our bedroom window so I got up. It was an eagle sitting in a tree eating a fish. The crows wanted some of that food!


We had our new granddaughter Audrey and her parents up last weekend. Again, the weather wasn't great so we didn't spend a lot of time outside, but we had fun touring Aitkin and playing games with Andrew and Erin.



I was able to mow the lawn in between the passing showers. It never rained hard, just a spit here and there. Saturday night was clear and calm so we built a fire in the fire pit, but it was cloudy and cool again Sunday morning. We did a lot of work in the lake trying to clean up the beach and rake the weeds. It's a work in progress, but it's getting better. Dar swam for the first time this summer.



We're trying to have friends visit us in the coming weekends. There aren't many left before school starts. Hopefully we'll get some interest in having some late summer fun at the lake.

Our first Fourth at Dam Lake

The weather was perfect for our first Fourth of July at the Dam Cabin. It was cold, cloudy, and rainy all week, but by Friday it was sunny and warm, and it was more of the same on Saturday the Fourth.

Our neighbors the Severson-Maguires came up to help us celebrate.

Highights: the boat wouldn't start for most of the day on Friday. Ahh, the joy of owning a used pontoon! The good news was I got it fixed. I didn't know boat motors had circuit breakers! The girls got to spend most of the day on the water. They'd never been in a canoe before. It didn't take them long to figure it out, and then they were all over the lake. Donna treated us to dinner at the Lakeview. The morning of the Fourth we drove the boat over to the other side of the lake and joined the annual boat parade. We didn't have much time to decorate, but we had a flag and something that looked like a huge top hat, so we sort of fit in. Janet and Chuck came over in the afternoon for a visit. We're enjoying having people over so we can show off a bit. The night of the Fourth we decided not to drive the ten miles to Aitkin for fireworks. We're glad we stayed at the lake. There were a lot of people around the lake shooting off big displays. The fireworks stands in Wisconsin did a killing with this crew. Next year we'll take the boat out into the middle of the lake for a better 360 degree view.

Fran's 81st Dam Birthday Party

Last weekend we had a full house as the Griffin clan descended on Dam Lake for Fran's 81st Birthday. The weather wasn't perfect, but we had a little sun between the rain showers so we could get out for a cruise, do some fishing, and have a bonfire Saturday night. It was nice to have Makayla and Audrey with us -- the fourth generations.



This weekend is the Fourth. Our first on Dam lake. We're expecting company tonight so I probably won't have time to write until next week.

June on Dam Lake

Someone mentioned the other day that we had a lot of hubris calling our new place the 'Dam Cabin.' Maybe hubris isn't quite the right word. Maybe 'ballsy' would be better - less prideful, more cheeky. But then the lightbulb went on and they had one of those Homer Simpson slap-yourself-on-the-forehead epiphanies. Oh, it's a cabin on Dam Lake. That's why you call it the Dam Cabin. Oh I get it now! I forget that not everyone has been with us since the beginning of this journey, and I don't want anyone to get the wrong impression. We love our Dam cabin and wish we could spend more time up there. Dam Cabin is a term of endearment, not an epithet

We drove up last weekend through a downpour. At times we couldn't see ten feet in front of the car. We were a little worried that the lakeshore road would be impassable, but it wasn't bad at all; muddy, but driveable. We were going to drive up earlier in the day, but changed our plans when we got the phone call from the hospital. It's a girl!

Our first grandchild, Audrey Neal was born at 3:45 pm last Thursday, so we changed our plans and drove down to the hospital to visit her instead. What a blessing!

We drove up Thursday night so we could get a full day of work in on Friday. Good planning on our part because we needed the time. Both Friday and Saturday were long work days. We got the windows fixed, did a lot of work on the lawn and grounds, and spent some time in the lake trying to do something with the weeds. Friday was a good work day; not too hot with cloudy skies but no rain. Saturday was a perfect up-at-the-lake day. It was sunny and warm. You almost had to be in the water to keep cool. I think controlling the weeds will have to be a work in progress. The bottom is hard sand, but on top of that is a two or three inch layer of detritus. When you rake it it billows up and then settles back down again. We'll have to do some research on that. I wonder if it can be removed? If you don't stir it up too much the water is very clear and clean.

Last weekend was also the weekend of the turtles. The roadsides are full of dead turtle roadkill, and we had at least three large turtles up on the lawn laying their eggs. I wonder what the gestation period is for a turtle egg?


This weekend is Grandma Fran's Dam Birthday Party, so we're going up tomorrow to start preparing. Hopefully the weather will cooperate. I think the plan is for 18 people. That should be interesting!

May on Dam Lake

We've been up to the cabin a couple of times since the last entry. Lot's to do here at home getting ready for school to end, so I haven't had much time to work on this.

Charlie and Kim came up a couple of weeks ago and helped us put the party barge in the water. We don't have a hitch on either of our vehicles so we have to rely on the generosity of friends and relatives this year.

Char was the natural pick for us. He drives over the road so he knows how to back up big loads, and he also owns a pontoon. He was the go-to guy for this job! Thankfully he was able and willing to come up and help us. When you have a pro on your side everything looks easy. We got the motor running (luckily he brought his battery charger with him, 'cause my thirty year old trickle charger didn't do a thing!), we got the barge in the water and Dar did the christening with a box of wine. We decided that rule number one would be 'no glass on the dock or boat.'


The next weekend we took it out for a pleasure cruise and almost ended up like Gilligan. I shut off the engine while we tried our hand at fishing. When the wind started blowing us out to sea I tried to restart it. It was like trying to start a '67 Falcon on a cold winter morning. We didn't panic, but Dar and I gave each other some furtive glances. "Maybe it's flooded," Dar said. That was what we always used to say in the old days when cars had carburetors. So I let it sit for awhile, then tried it again. I was starting to get a little worried. We weren't going to get lost or anything, just blown to the other side of the lake and then we'd have to figure out how to get back. Call a tow-boat or something. Anyway, it started. A quick shared look of relief passed between us. I drove 'er home straight away and we fished from the dock. Dar caught the first fish -- the first Dam fish! -- so she won the quarter.

I caught the second fish which was much bigger. It was at least a half an inch longer. They were two tiny large mouth bass, but it was fun to catch them.


This weekend was a work weekend. I mowed the lawn -- again. It takes about two hours even with my rider. Dar washed all the windows. I hosed down the screens. It doesn't sound like a lot, but we were tired by the time we were done!

This was also a big critter weekend. As we drove up Friday night a deer ran in front of our car just before we got to the lake. We haven't seen many deer, although we've seen lots of tracks. We saw many new birds. The hummingbirds are loving the feeder by your front door. I think they may have a nest in the arbevita near the feeder. Their camouflage is perfect for that kind of tree.


We had Cedar Waxwings eating the blossoms off of our flowering crab tree. I didn't know they liked flowers!


There was an Oriole that came drinking from the hummingbird feeder, and, although we've heard them in the woods, we had a pileated woodpecker visit the trees on our lake shore. I think I also saw a fisher of some kind. It wasn't a King fisher, but it was definitely a small fish-eating bird. And most important of all, we found the first wood ticks of the season! Ooh, I itch just thinking about it.

Next time we go up we'll be preparing for the guest season. I think our first booking is Fran's Dam Birthday Party. It should be interesting, and fun, to have the whole family overnight!

Puttin' In The Dock

Dick came over early this morning. He agreed to take my riding lawn mower up to the cabin on his trailer. He also agreed to help put in the dock; The Rite of Spring for all true Minnesotans. Tyler found two friends, Danny and Eric, to also help roll out our quay. We left home about 6:30, Tyler and friends got up to the cabin around eleven. That gave the adults some time to have a cup of coffee or two and a doughnut for those who indulge in glutenous treats.

It didn't take long to get the dock into the water. I think it could've been done with three, but five made it easy. It still needs some leveling, but it's in the water and ready for the Party Barge.

Today was also the Official Minnesota Fishing Opener. I'm happy to say that Dick and I were both able to wet a line and inaugurate the 2009 opener. We didn't get any nibbles, but it didn't look like anyone else on the lake was either. When we drove by Mille Lacs the roadsides were lined with cars, trucks, and trailers. The bay on the Northeast corner of the lake was wall-to-wall boats. Dick and I laughed. We'd never seen that many boats in one spot before. Whenever there was more than one boat in a spot on a lake my dad used to say, "Someone caught a fish!" Well, someone must of caught a fish there today! Or else everyone read the same article in the local paper that said the shallows in the north end of the lake would be good for fishing. I expected to see a lot of boats on Dam Lake too, but it was surprisingly quiet.

I didn't get to mow the lawn today. That'll be my job for next weekend!

If you click on the slide show in the left column of the blog it'll open a new page and you'll be able to view the photos in a larger format.

Sunshine

We had a very pleasant weekend up at the Dam Cabin. The sun was shining brightly. There was a slight chill in the breeze, so it wasn't ideal for sitting on the deck and soaking in the rays, but we did sit for awhile, and we did get some rays. We just had to keep a few more garments on than we would have liked. If it wasn't great for sunbathing, it was great weather for working, and we got a lot of little projects done. Dar did some painting on the stairway and sealed the deck chairs.


I built a bed frame for the queen bed we scored from Pritchard's church. That is one comfy bed now! You'll have to come up and spend the night.

Mostly we just relaxed and watched the neighbors putting their docks out. We saw the first boats on the lake - don't know if they caught any fish or not, but there were a couple out there trying. After working all day Saturday we decided we should drive over to the other side of the lake to the local tavern-on-the-water AKA "that Dam Bar" (in a few weeks we'll have the party barge out and we'll drive ACROSS the lake) We shared a pitcher of beer, ate some old popcorn, tried to figure out which people were our neighbors, and then drove home for dinner. It was very enjoyable.

We're heading up again this weekend to put in the dock. That should be interesting!

Ice Out 2009

Add it to the Almanac. The official ice-out for Dam Lake in 2009 was April 19.

When we arrived Friday night there was still a substantial amount of ice covering the lake. By morning open water had spread out quite a ways. When we left Sunday morning most of the ice was gone, although we could still see some patches on the south side of the lake. I don't think it could have lasted through the day, so I'm calling it in. Official ice-out on the 19th.

Friday night ice. Sunday morning no ice!

The weather was warm this past weekend, but it was cloudy. Not great light for taking pictures to be sure. I think Dar and I envisioned doing a little work and then sitting on the deck sunning for an hour or two. We did sit on the deck, and we did see the sun for about ten minutes, but that was it. I'm sure we'll have lots of deck and dock time coming up, so we're not too sad.

One of the things I've loved about being up at the Dam Cabin this winter was the solitude and quiet. Kiss that goodbye! We took a walk down the road around eleven o'clock Friday night to look at the stars, and the noise was deafening. We disagree on what the noise was coming out of the swampy area by the brook, but I think it was frogs. They were putting up such a racket we couldn't hardly hear ourselves think! It can't be birds. Birds don't stay up and party all night like that. This didn't sound like the croakers we're used to down in the city, but considering where the noise was coming from, I don't think it could've been anything else.

There was a lot of bird activity this weekend as well. The geese were still there, but not in great numbers. The swans seemed to be gone. There were a lot of other water birds we hadn't seen before. I guess I better get a bird book if I'm going to try to identify some of them. There were mallards and loons, and I think I saw a couple of wood ducks, but there was one pair that looked like loons but had large patches of white on their sides, not speckled like the common loon. You orthodontists, er orthopedists, ornithologists out there. Let us know what we're looking at here. They were pretty anyway.

Whatthehellarethese Birds. Common Loon

We had an interesting adventure on Saturday. We drove into Aitkin and attended the annual shareholders meeting of the Mille Lacs Power Co-op. But I think that will have to wait for another blog entry. I'll try to post again this coming weekend.

Addendum: I did some looking online, and I think the birds I'd never seen before are Common Mergansers -- not to be confused with the Hooded Mergansers we saw a few weeks ago. What did we ever do without the internet?

April First snowstorm

Since the last time we visited the Dam cabin they had a foot of new snow. It was pretty up there, but the road was a muddy mess, the ice was too thin to walk on, so there wasn't a whole lot we could do once we got up there.

The Pritchards volunteered to haul some large items up with their trailer. It was great to have guests for a night. We drove down to the Lakeview tavern and had a pitcher of beer. It was fun to look out over the lake and see our house on the other side.

We didn't stay long. Our guests had to be home by noon the next day, so we got up early and drove home the next morning.


It's Spring, but it didn't look or feel like it because of the snow. No one told the birds. They've started showing up on the creek. We saw Canada Geese, Hooded Mergansers, Swans, and Mallards. Dar said she also saw a beaver waddling down the road. I think once the ice and snow are gone we should start seeing a little more life up there.

Social Bookmarking Part II

I forgot to add something to the last blog entry.

A really interesting site you should look at is:

http://popacular.com/

It lists the most popular bookmarks added to Delicious.com on an hourly, daily, weekly, or yearly basis. What could be more social than that? Check out what all the other users of Delicious are bookmarking!

Social Bookmarking

It's time to switch from Faith overcoming fear: our first year of cabin ownership! to Respond to this week's assignment in your blog assignment.

This week we're learning about social bookmarking and in particular using the site Delicious.

Last year was the first year I really started to use a social networking site. The other Tech Teachers that I knew were using Linkagogo. Their lists looked great. It seemed like a logical idea. I just didn't want to do it. I fought adding that piece to my skill set. Finally I bucked the trend and set up a Delicious account, and I haven't looked back. It's a really easy way for me to organize student bookmarks. I can keep teacher bookmarks on the same site. I have the option of publishing them or keeping them hidden which I think is a very valuable option.

I use my Delicious site as the homepage for our computer lab so students always have access to the sites I have previewed and feel are appropriate for their use. I've also added a link to my web page so that parents can access the site. The one thing I haven't done is advertise my list to teachers in my building. I think that will be my next step.

If you haven't opened a Delicious account yet you should. It's a great way to store and organize all of your bookmarks.

Click here to examine my bookmarks

Remnants

I'm behind in my blog posts. I promised I'd post some pictures from our visit last week, and I got off track.

It was easier to post when there were major changes and new adventures to relate. Right now we're going up expecting everything to be the same. We want to arrive and not find anything amiss. We want to go up and relax and enjoy.

Of course there's always some little project to do while we're up there. That's probably one of the joys of cabin ownership. This trip Dar wanted that darn roll of old carpet out of the basement! I left out the quotation marks, but you could probably put them in without too much difficulty. So we spent a few hours rolling, unrolling, measuring, cutting, and fitting remnants of the old carpet to fill up the bare spots left behind when the stairs were removed. I did a pretty sloppy job I have to admit. I don't think I'll be picking up any extra cash laying carpet when I retire! But it looks fine for now: I cut and fit; Dar put down the double sided tape and supervised; Louis laid around looking confused.



Wildlife update:
I've written a few times about the dearth of wildlife up at the cabin. I'm sure if you get off the beaten track it's as busy as a safari park. They're just more elusive up north. I guess I'm just used to our suburban setting where animals have learned how protected they are, and we see relatively tame deer, rabbits, pheasants, fox, woodchucks, and birds flocking from neighborhood feeder to feeder.

We've seen tracks in the mud, so we know there are deer in the vicinity. We saw and heard a lot of hunters up there last fall. The previous owner had his own deer stand in a tree not far into the forest behind the cabin. Maybe that's the problem! Maybe there's a stench of death around our place, and the animals are afraid to come near it. Or maybe, just maybe, the ghosts of all those murdered ruminants gather late at night to plot their revenge on the men in orange. They're probably right outside our door every night trying to figure out how to get in!
Makes you want to come up and visit, doesn't it?

Actually, we did finally see some deer last week. As I was sipping my first cup of coffee on Saturday morning I saw some movement out in the woods. On closer inspection it was a group of deer walking through the trees. I wasn't quick enough to get a picture of them, but if I had it would probably have looked something like this . . .
sort of.

More adventures to come I'm sure!

Setting up an RSS feed

I'm enrolled in a class in Wayzata and I listed this blog as one I'm keeping on a regular basis. Well, on a fairly regular basis anyway. This week's assignment is to set up an RSS feed in an RSS reader.

I've been a regular reader of blogs for a long time. Since I have a Google account I choose to use Google Reader, and it's been working very well for me. It's very easy to add and delete blogs, and also very easy to both scan blog entries and star them for archiving.

I have three or four Educational Blogs that I follow such as Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/) which has a ton of links to both educational and technology sites. I also have a feed from the Hennepin County Library which lets me know whenever a new item has been added to their collection. I want to be the first to see the newest Bollywood extravaganza! My son in Alaska is keeping a blog which I keep track of in Reader as well as the blog written by Nancy Neal's daughter who is taking a J-term in South Africa. Having access to all of those blogs in one spot really saves me a lot of time and energy. Opening up a feed reader in Google is one of the best things I ever did!

A Trillion Dollars!

We'll be heading up to the lake this weekend so expect a blog entry then.

I saw this little slide show today and thought it was pretty impressive - and worth sharing. How big is a trillion dollars?



It's a slide show not a movie, so you have to click on the advance button to see the next slide.

If you have a Google account you can click on the small square button next to the slide counter and it will show up full screen so you can read it more easily. Otherwise you'll have to enjoy the smaller version embedded here.

Birthday Party

We couldn't go up to the cabin this weekend because both Dar and I were celebrating birthdays. We had a little get-together on Saturday night. Dar thought it would be nice to post some pictures. Remember, if you click on a picture a larger version will open up so you can see it more easily.











We're hoping to get back up to the cabin this weekend, but for sure the weekend after.

The "Do You Like The New Color" poll is closed. The results were: 85% Liked the new color, 15% thought it really didn't matter because we aren't going to repaint any time soon. I'd say everyone was correct on that one!