May started out with a big bang. Rusty made his debut performance on the clarinet at The Cottonwood Club in Lincoln. He sat in with the Peter Bouffard trio.
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| He sounded great! Peter's reaction at the end of the first song was, "DAMN!" |
Celeste turned 8 in May and celebrated with a trip to the Children's Zoo.
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| Papaw and Celeste |
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| Present time with GiGi and Papaw. |
Our former neighbor's youngest child, Racheal, graduated from high school and has a scholarship to play softball at Wesleyan University.
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| I'm wearing heels, Rachael is not. |
Our spring Boundary Waters trip was in mid May. We decided to take a shuttle across Burntside Lake to the first portage, saving 3 or more hours of paddling on the first and last days.
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| loading canoes onto the shuttle |
After the shuttle we portaged about 1.25 miles to Crab Lake. We do a double portage, so that's a total of 3.75 miles. Two trips we are carrying canoes and gear.
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| When the food containers are full, my packs weigh a little over 40 pounds each. |
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| The Crab Lake portage has a small water obstacle near the middle. While rock hopping, my pack always seems to swing sideways and throw me off balance. |
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| It was pouring rain when we arrived, but Steve set up tarps and built a fire for supper. |
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| After the rain stopped, I hung my long underwear to dry. |
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| I caught a nice bass on the second day. |
One day we decided to take a day trip to Battle Lake. Because we were the first people to take this route after winter, there were many downed trees across the trail.
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| Steve did a lot of clearing to open the trail. |
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| Some trees were too big for Steve's handsaw. Rusty had to lift the canoe over. |
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| This downed tree next to the trail had a huge root ball. |
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| Another section of the trail was easy-peasy. |
We fished on Battle Lake. Rusty caught a decent Northern, but ended up with a hook buried in the back of his hand while the lure was still in the fish's mouth. It was pretty exciting for a few minutes!! He also lost his Tilly hat in the process, but we were able to paddle back across the lake and retrieve it.
On our way back to our campsite, 9 Forest Service workers came to clear the trail. Steve had done most of the work, but they took care of the bigger trees.
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| Forest Service workers using a pull saw. |
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| These pretty flowers will be blueberries in a couple of months. |
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| The spring lichen was blooming too. |
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| This fallen tree made firewood for most days while we were camped. |
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| This was shore lunch one day. We ate them all! |
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| We had so much fish that one day we ate fish for all three meals. |
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| bag of cleaned and filleted fish for dinner |
We usually put the fish guts on a rock away from camp but close enough to see. It was fun watching the eagle fly back and forth over us as he cleaned off the fish remains.
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| Two tents, a fire grate, and multiple tarps made up our campsite for five days on Saka Lake. |
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| The fire grate and cooking area. |
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| Fish dinner with fry bread and rice and beans in the pot. |
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| Dishes all washed up and now drying on our granite countertop. |
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| The last morning was very cold and windy. I was grateful for the hot coffee. |
Other than the Forest Service workers, we saw no other people on our trip. The solitude and quiet was good for the soul. The wilderness is incredibly beautiful!!!
