Birthday Weekend at Camp Chicken

For the first time ever, I decided to take a day off for my birthday weekend.  So I took last Friday off and we decided to go to camp and play some golf to celebrate.

Arlene and I got up early on Friday and packed up our golf clubs and camp gear and headed to Camp Chicken.  We got to camp and got unloaded and set up.  It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny and the leaves were just spectacular.

The weekend before, we had a big family dinner at Chris and Judy's new house to celebrate Aunt Mary, Cindy and my birthdays. Mom, Dad, Dad's sister Mary, Chris, Judy, Ross, Cindy, Aunt Mary's son Chuck and his girlfriend Sue, Arlene, her sister Judy and Mary Sue all came.

Arlene cooked baby back ribs on the grill, and whitefish and perch and we had a real feast.   Everyone had a great time.  Here is a photo of my nephew Ross and me being silly.

We had decided to go play golf at Hessel Ridge on Friday, which is only about 5 miles or so from camp.  We played 9 holes and it couldn't have been more perfect.  The weather was so warm and sunny and the leaves were really beautiful.  It is a really nice course.

After golf, we went for a ride around the Hessel-Cedarville area and decided to try the Snow's Bar in Cedarville for dinner.  There were a lot of cars there, which is always a good sign.  We ordered the special which was all-you-can-eat walleye dinner with homemade french fries and cole slaw.  It was delicious and the service was really great.  Highly recommended.

On the way back to camp, we stopped off at the Hessel casino for Lady's night and played for quite a while.  We did okay and came out about even for the evening. 

When we got back to camp, we made some coffee and decided to play a game of Phase 10 before bed.  Unfortunately, Arlene ended up with some intestinal distress and had to make a flying trip to the outhouse.  So that was an a bad end to the evening.  She was sleeping on the couch when at 1:30 AM, I heard her say "oh no!".  I jumped out of bed and immediately knew what was wrong.  A skunk had sprayed right beside the trailer.  I have never had anything smell so horribly as that smell.  My eyes were burning and I wanted to throw up.  I mean, I have smelled skunk before but not that close.

I said to here, "we have to get out of here" but she convinced me that the skunk could still be out there and could spray again if we tried to leave.  It was hideous!  I spent the rest of the night with my head covered up.

The next morning, the smell wasn't nearly so bad.  Thank goodness, he had sprayed away from the trailer and not underneath it on directly on it.  Arlene thought that something was after him and that was why he sprayed.

We wanted to put up the deer feeders that day but we had to run to town first and get some corn at the feed mill.  We got back to camp and loaded the feeders in the car and spend the morning getting those set up.

We were going to set up our trail cameras but I forgot the memory cards so we couldn't do that.  It will have to wait for another weekend.

So we decided to get the 4-wheelers out and go for a ride.  We spent the rest of the afternoon riding around and just enjoying the day.  We took a break and had a late lunch and decided to go for a car ride and look for deer.

We weren't disappointed as we saw some nice bucks out in the fields.  We went for a really long ride, down Town Line road to the very end and then across Jarvie road to M-48 and back east to Hancock road to Town Line again.  We decided to go to the casino for awhile and played for a few hours.

We got back to camp and had a peaceful night with no further skunk attacks.  Thank goodness for that.


We slept in Sunday morning and after enjoying some coffee decided to go cut up a poplar tree that was blocking one of our 4-wheeler trails.  We managed to cut it up into chunks that we could roll out of the way.  It was a good thing that we brought the chain saw as there were limbs and the tops of a couple of trees down on several of our roads.  It took us awhile to get them cleaned up and off of our trails.

We got back to camp and Mom surprised us with a visit.  I started a fire so we could cook hot dogs over the fire and made lunch for all of us.  Mom had already had lunch but couldn't resist a hot dog cooked over the open fire.  They taste the best that way.  We had a nice time visiting with her.

All too soon it was time to pack up and head home.  It was a shame too as the weather was so nice.  It had been the most beautiful weekend.  Three straight days of mild, sunny weather had made it really nice. 

It had been one of the nicest birthdays I could have had.