Quiet Weekend at Camp

Arlene and I took off early from work Friday to head to camp. On the way, I called Mom to let her know that we were going and she said that their garage door had quit working. So after unpacking we headed to Mom and Dad's to have a look.

The door is definitely broken and needs a new spring (the big one that attaches to the rod that makes the door go up and down.

We went back to camp and decided to clean up the area on the other side of the place where the motorhome used to sit. We had piled branches, logs and stuff in the holes hoping it would rot and fill them up, but it never really did and just looked messy.

I know, it is the woods, but we like camp to look neat and clean. So we hauled away two trailer loads of brush and made a new brush pile in the meadow.

About 6:00 PM we headed to Hessel for dinner with a short detour to the fields near camp to do a little scouting.

Saw a couple of nice spikehorns, and while we were turning around, noticed what appeared to be four large doe in the second field back. I dug out the binoculars from under the back seat to take a closer look. The "doe" turned out to be a nice buck, at least a six-point, quite possibly larger.

We headed on to Hessel and stayed until they closed the place.

Saturday was quite cool and cloudy and we were both concerned as we had invited Mom and Dad, Cindy and Arlene's brother Wayne and his wife Joan up for dinner. We usually celebrate my sister Cindy and my birthdays by going out for brunch but we thought we would change it up this year and invite everyone for dinner. Arlene generously volunteered to cook.

About 11:30 AM, Mary and Tiny surprised us with a visit and we sat around chatting by the fire for awhile. Of course, we aren't much for sitting around, so we went up to the hill to see if we could dig out this huge limestone rock that Arlene's sister Judy wanted for part of her walkway. An hour later after excavating a three foot hole and breaking the shovel, we got that thing out and loaded on my little trailer. Wow, was it heavy.

About 2:00 PM, the sun finally appeared and saved the day for our dinner as we had planned on eating outside. Arlene started cooking and everyone showed up on time.

We had a real feast: grilled whitefish cooked on cedar boards that we had soaked for three hours, bison tenderloin, chicken breast, boiled red garden potatoes, peas, sliced tomatoes, cucumbers and sweet onions and bread with frosted brownies for dessert. It was great.

After dinner, we sat and visited by the fire. We were so busy that I forgot to take any pictures.

Everyone but Cindy left by 9:00 PM and we built a real roaring fire and stayed out until almost 11:30 PM.

Sunday, we slept in until almost 10 AM, unheard of for us. Usually, we are up by at least 8:00 AM.

We took a ride on the 4-wheelers and checked our trail cameras but no bear pictures, thank goodness. Our bear must have just been passing through.

We packed up early as we had to go to Cindy's and spray down her outside entryway with stuff to kill the hundreds of spiders that have taken up residence there.

It was like a Halloween movie as I was spraying, the spiders were coming down on webs trying to get away from the spray. Yuck. I was smacking them with the broom and killing them. Now her only outside broom is full of dead spider guts, so I went to Walmart tonight and bought her a new one.

We helped her take her air conditioner out of her window as it is supposed to turn quite cool this week.

No camp this weekend, although we may go up Sunday and check the cameras and cut some wood if the weather is decent. Arlene's great-granddaughter, Madison, is turning three on Saturday, so we are going to her birthday party.