Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Happy Canada Day! It was already 70 degrees when I woke up at 5:30 as a matter of fact it was quite warm in the cabin. I got up and opened some windows and the porch door and slept on the couch for couple more hours. When Scott woke up we ate breakfast and did a Bible study. Today we did a John tape and he’s talking about the crucifixion. The main principle I took from it was that it wasn’t important that John stood on the hill but the doctrine that he had in his soul. He focuses on the promises that had been fulfilled rather than his environment. It’s hard not to focus on the environment here. It is so relaxing. Every time we embark on a new adventure my soul rejoices in the beauty and the grace of God. I can’t help but smile. We collected all the fishing gear and headed out. The motor was having problems starting up and wouldn’t run very fast. It was also die when we idled. We cast a few times around Paradise Island and then headed to Deer Trail Lodge to buy some fresh gas. The gas we were using was from last year and Scott was afraid it was causing the problem. Once we got the new gas we were good to go. It started in one pull and moved out at a good pace. We took a little tour of the mainland a little ways passed Cabin Island. We saw an eagle who let us get right up next to him before he flew away. We casted a few and then I pulled out the fish finder watch that Scott had received as a gift. I hooked it to the pole and we discovered there just weren’t any fish there! So we moved on to Tivo Island where we found some fish but they didn’t seem to want our lures. It was a beautiful day, the sun had come out and our thermometers read about 80 degrees. We talked to a guy for Bear Trail who had two beautiful dogs in the boat with him, they both looked like labs, one black and one golden. We watched a serious Canadian fisherman pull in a small northern. He was using a big lure and really working it. We decided it was time for lunch so we thought we would troll home. That’s when it happened! I finally caught a northern. We both thought it was dead until Scott reached in to pick it up! After that we headed in for lunch.

After lunch the water was getting pretty rough but still I decided to take a kayak ride. It turned out to be the ride of my life! It took me 10 minutes to paddle out to the tip of Paradise Island. The wind was really blowing. I was getting sprayed about every third wave but I paddled on. I knew that if I could just get around to the other side it would be a calm ride in with not a lot of paddling. After 10 more minutes I hit the southwest end of the island. It was like I suddenly hit the ocean. The waves were incredible (for Eagle Lake) but they were crashing into the shore. When I turned to go around the island, I would get stuck in the swells and water would crash into my kayak. I was actually scared but tried to continue to think. I knew then that I had to paddle against the waves and angle away from the island toward the other end. That worked much better but the waves were doing this crazy “mixer” thing. Every once in awhile I would get turned sideways or pushed by a wave and it would crash onto my kayak. I was sure I was going to capsize. I kept the beach in view through the corner of my eye so that if I did capsize I could swim to it. I continued to angle away from the island until I was passed it. The waves were still huge and there were tons of whitecaps. I wasn’t going to get the calm side like a thought! Now I had to somehow do an 180 degree turn so that I could go with the waves and not get caught in the swells. Once I did that I started riding the waves back toward the cabin. It did start to calm down at the end of the island and when I turned around the tip, I found Scott in his kayak and the water was pretty calm over there. When we looked back toward Tivo Island you could see the whitecaps, it was a lot rougher over there. Then we looked to the southwest sky and saw a storm moving in so we hightailed it back to the dock. As we were pulling in the wind started in again and the waves got rough again. It was throwing water over the last two sections of the dock. After we secured everything we took our baths and then sat on the dock to watch the storm. There was some massive cloud to ground strikes over toward the northwest that were cool to watch. Then the wind picked up and the lightening began to circle around toward us so we headed into the cabin. After picking up we sat down to do some reading and listen to the storm. It was a real pretty rainfall and didn’t last much more than a half hour. As I was sitting in the chair, I saw a man walk by our front door so Scott went to check it out. It was a furniture delivery guy from Orr, Minnesota looking for Jeff Grove. We called Ron and Dee and met them at Jeff’s cabin. They had sent this old guy to deliver this heavy furniture without even a dolly! Scott and I ended up carrying the chest inside because this guy couldn’t even lift one end of it. They had also delivered a bunk bed for the kids and some beautiful chairs for the front deck. We visited with Ron and Dee for a while and then headed back to the cabin as a light rain started to fall. It doesn’t seem like it will amount to much!

It’s 7 pm and we are going to heat up some leftovers and who knows maybe a game of cards…