Vacation, Day 8. The end.

Friday, July 25, 2014

I baked the last four scones for breakfast. We ate them with the wild blueberries I picked the day before. We had about a tablespoon of blueberries each. Despite the small serving, the flavor was sweet and intensely blueberry-y. By 8:00 the sky had clouded over, and there was still not a breath of wind.

After the breakfast dishes were done, we went down to the dock to fish off the rest of our leeches. It turned out there were only 5, and they were quickly gone. We tried twister tails for a little while. It seemed that the fish would bite at the tails at first, learn that they were not good to eat, and leave them alone. I went back to the office for one more dozen.

Nancy was generous with the count, which she tends to be when the leeches are as small as these were. Still, it was a commitment to get through them. I kept putting them on the hooks, and the fish kept taking them off. I only landed one more bluegill after that. The biggest bluegill of the morning stayed hooked just long enough for us to get a good look at it, and then unhooked itself right by the dock. Frankly, I consider this a bonus. We had used up all our leeches by 11:00.

We continued cleaning out the refrigerator for lunch. We had the last two brats on the last two buns, the remainder of the carrots and the last cucumber. We finished the yogurt.

Jane sat on the deck while I took a shower. I was just combing my hair when I heard the rain. I rushed to the door to help Jane get the chairs in. She had seen the rain on the lake and thought it was funny that she couldn’t feel it. Suddenly, it was raining on her, and not just the drop here and there. It was coming down! We were able to leave the windows open because there was still no wind. It looked like it was settling in for a rainy afternoon. No matter. We had planned to go back to town anyway.

We couldn't leave for town too soon because we did not want to get to Betsy Bowin's before 3:00, and we didn't want to come back before we went out for supper. We hung around the cabin. Jane said, "Did you ever notice that that chair is smiling?"

She was right. One chair had a definite smile right across the board beneath the seat cushion, which reminded us both of Chairy from PeeWee's Playhouse so very long ago.

Smiling Chairy

 

We started off for town a little after 2:00. The weather got better. We made our first visit to the Pincushion Mountain overlook.

Pincushion Mountain overlook of Grand Marais and Lake Superior

 

We got calendars and notecards at Betsy Bowen’s studio. And we went to Sydney’s to get custard. The girl at the window apologized that they had to mix up a new batch of chocolate, and we would have to wait a few minutes. I was fine with that. At least we could get it. I watched the process with interest. When we had been denied chocolate earlier in the week because it was too hot in the kitchen, I couldn’t figure out why they would be able to freeze vanilla custard and not chocolate. Well. They only use the ice cream freezer for vanilla. To make the chocolate, they put a bunch of vanilla custard into the freezer box that they scoop from and mix it with a very dark chocolate custard base using a mixer paddle attached to a heavy-duty power drill. If it’s too warm in the kitchen, the vanilla would thaw before the chocolate would get mixed in, and refreezing at that point would cause large ice crystals to form. Mystery solved.

We watched dragon boat practice while we ate our ice cream. The dragon boat races are the last weekend of July. We are often on vacation at that time, and up to now, we have avoided being anywhere near Grand Marais during the commotion. Since we were forced to come to town for the calendars, we were able to see how it worked. I had learned from our outfitter, Dave that the boats were big, expensive, and held 22 people. There were only three boats, and the race ran in several heats leading to the finals. Jane hypothesized that the boats were rented by various communities for these events. It looked like a lot of fun, although concentration would be required to keep the rhythm and not whack oars with a neighbor.

We got to the Red Paddle Bistro for supper at 4:45. We sat ourselves at the hostess’s suggestion and were ignored for a while. Once we were discovered, our waitress was attentive. I had a beer. Jane ordered a brandy Manhattan. We both had the burgers, ½ pound of beef with sautéed mushrooms, lettuce, red onion, tomato, choice of cheese (I had cheddar, Jane had provolone), and red pepper aioli. Jane was right—the aioli is what made the burger. I’d always had black and blue burgers in the past because I adore bleu cheese, but that burger was just okay. The red pepper aioli gave the burger a hit of garlic that made it truly outstanding. The burger was served with a huge pile of curly seasoned fries and a pickle. Too much food.  What’s new?

Back at the cabin, we packed as much as we could in the car. We played farkel while watching for loons and otters. We saw one loon and no otters. The last night of vacation is always a little sad.

Last loon

And on Saturday, we packed up everything else and drove home.