Wednesday, July 9, 2008

I’m the first one up (not really though I know Grandpa is in there reading his Billy Graham book that he has trouble putting down), sitting on the couch watching the reflection of the sun on Paradise Island. There is a line of big fluffy, white and gray clouds and it looks like there is a spot light on the island. I tried to capture it on film but I don’t know if it will do it justice! I’m sad because our time here is drawing to an end. We are having a cookout tonight and inviting a few old friends. We would like to invite more but we just don’t have room in the cabin. We can’t count on using the porch because it has been so cold here lately.

It turned out to be what I fondly term a “Wissmiller Day”. We got up and did our Bible study and headed outside. Dad was mowing, Scott was tearing off the garage roof and I was the gopher. Then I took over the mowing and Dad started repairing the stairs down to the Lake. So Scott was tearing off the roof, I was mowing, Dad was repairing steps and mom was trimming trees. Dad came by after finishing two steps and told us when I ran out of gas we were going fishing. Now keep in mind it was almost noon, we hadn’t had lunch and we were having guests at 6:30pm. Scott gets toward the end of the roof and there are big holes in the plywood so at some point we are going to have to go back into Dryden and buy some plywood. Scott finishes one side of the roof, I finished mowing before it ran out of gas and helped mom carry all the trees she had trimmed to the burn pile while Dad finished up the third step. We threw together some sandwiches and snacks for lunch grabbed all of our stuff and jumped into the boat. We forgot the Hummingbird Fish Finder so we had to run back up to the cabin and get it. Then we discovered we were almost out of gas so we went to Deer Trail. Where we then realized we had forgotten our life jackets so we went back to our dock. Finally we were on our way to the walleye hole near Dog Island. We fished for quite a while but only ended up with a couple of keeper walleyes. By this time it’s about 3 pm. Mom and I took some great pictures of a loon.

On the way home we saw an American White Pelican. It's the first I've ever seen on Eagle Lake and it was the biggest Pelican I have ever seen!!

Back at the dock there was a common merganser sitting

on the rock. We get

everything unpacked while Dad goes off to find a saw that we can borrow from someone. He comes back and tells us he’s going to Dryden (30 minutes one way). Mom tells me to go with him to return some keys we needed to return. Dad and I head off to Dryden; Scott starts mowing in the woods and then cuts off the bad plywood on the roof. Dad and I are gone for about an hour and ten minutes, it rained our entire trip so we were worried about the uncovered roof, hoping it wasn’t raining there. When we get back around 4pm, mom has the entire cabin spotless and it starts storming; thunder, lightening and all. We have a hole in the roof, none of us had bathed and we had two hours. We obviously could do nothing about the whole with the lightning. Dad decided to let the two walleye that were in the livewell free but found them dead with no water when he got down there so he ended up having to clean them.

Scott and I refuse to take a shower in Canada so we were going to head down to the water for a bath which got nixed by Dad along with a lecture about how far lightning can travel through water (which I’m pretty sure he just made up his figures!). So we just continued to work on things to get ready for the party. The storm started to let up about a half hour later. We headed down for our baths and there were dark clouds on one side of the dock and sun on the other side. The water was like glass so I couldn’t resist hopping in my kayak and taking a short paddle out but I was a little nervous after Dad’s lecture because the one side of the sky was still awfully dark, so I didn’t go very far. After our baths we got the food going and the rain started again. Everyone arrived in their vehicles, Ron and Dee, Dick and Becky Cameron (and Barb), and Michael and Martha. It was literally a full house. Everyone fit around the table except for three. Dad grilled the burgers and we had tator tots, macaroni salad, cooked veggies, baked beans, and brownies (from Dee) and ice cream for dessert. Michael provided us with a nice dry wine for our meal and a great time was had by all. There were many trips down memory lane and a lot of catching up. After dinner we had a wild game of Mexican train going out on the porch and a game of Shanghais Rummy in the cabin.

Everyone left around 10:30pm. It had been a huge success and a long day! We finished cleaning up and before we crashed out I went outside and took a picture of the moon on the water. It was the first moon we had seen since we arrived.