Boundary Waters, Day 1

 The trouble with leaving on vacation is that many of the things that you don’t do at home while you are away are waiting for you when you get back. Tomatoes to pick. Weeds to pull. Bills to pay. 563 unread emails. (disclosure: I left with over 400. I’ve gotten so bad about checking daily.) “Blog post” has a permanent place on my to-do list, but one day follows another. Today, however, it is dangerously hot and humid outside. I harvested between 9:00 and 10:00 this morning, and when I was done, my T-shirt was so stuck to my body that I couldn’t get it off to put on a dry one.

I am taking time this afternoon to start blogging about our trip to northern Minnesota. Since we’ve been back for over two weeks (seems longer), it’s nice to look back at the photos and remember the cool weather.

The drive to the cabin on Saturday, August 3, was uneventful, which is what you want if you have to spend 11.5 hours in a car.

Sunday morning was beautiful. We try to not get in the car at all on Sunday as we are still stove up from Saturday. We had blueberry pancakes with peaches and bacon for breakfast, although by the time we got up and organized to cook, it was more like brunch.

Breakfast

Shortly after the dishes were done, we had our first loon sighting, an adult and a baby. The baby was nearly as big as the parent, but that can be deceiving as down makes a chick look larger than it actually is. The adult was busy finding small fish to feed the chick.

One of many fish fed to the baby

After the chick took the fish, it preened itself, showing us its white belly and sticking out its foot.

Post-prandial preening

Then it stretched.

Stretch and flap

The parent brought another fish.

Next fish

The chick proceeded to give us quite a show, first rolling over,

Roll and preen again

Then stretching again,

Stretch!

Putting up a foot and waving it in the air (we’ve often observed this, but I don’t know why they do it. If they are trying to dry it, it is all in vain since is goes right back in the water. Perhaps it is another way to stretch. Chickens do something like it without the wave.)

Wave #1

And waving another way.

Wave #2--big feet, hey?

The loons moved out of our bay. We passed the day sitting on the deck enjoying the pleasant coolness. Jane grilled dinner. The foil-pack potatoes came out perfectly, golden and crunchy on the bottom.

Mmm--foil pack potatoes

Here’s my plate with potatoes, sweet corn, and zucchini from my garden along with half of the porter from the porterhouse we shared. We’d had snacks with happy hour and left the New York strip for another meal.

Supper

In the middle of supper, we saw something far away that didn’t behave like a loon. It was an otter! Leaving my meal to get cold, I grabbed my camera and went down to the dock to take a great number of poorly focused photos. Otters are surprisingly long.

Look at the length of this animal--that's its backside breaching the water behind it.

This is the most focused picture I was able to get.

Bad pose, but sort of in focus

After supper, the loons came around again, this time much closer to our side of the lake.

Swimming into the sunset

Good food, good weather, good wildlife viewing, good company, good food and wine—it was a perfect start to vacation.