Wednesday was a mellow day; the kind you hope and plan for, but rarely actually get to enjoy on vacation. It was our last full day at camp. We did some more kayaking and canoeing, but mostly it was just blissful lounging around. The kids swam in the pool and played in the cabin. They also spent a lot of time playing with Wyatt and Madison, the owner's children, on the jungle gym outside our cabin. They all got along really well and in the evenings L would spend time drawing pictures to give them the next day.
In the afternoon Grampy went back into Patten to take care of some business that would keep him there until after dinner. Meanwhile Stacy and I secured Mimi's babysitting services and quietly slipped away for a walk on some trails that wandered around the lake. The rains of the week before were gone, but the sizable puddles remained, requiring some rather dramatic springing from one mudbank to the other. (As you can no doubt picture well in your mind's eye, I was extremely graceful and dexterous in these hurdles, whereas Stacy lumbered around like a drunken moose.) The endless little frogs of the woods certainly weren't complaining and were reclining luxuriously in numbers in all the little mid-trail spas. The trail we walked took us down to the southwestern end of the lake to the outlet brook that flowed on past toward Baxter State Park. It was refreshing to be all alone again - we so rarely are without the kids, and almost never absolutely alone. We almost felt newly-wedish again.
Wild mushrooms!
The two previous nights we had cooked dinner out on our grill, but we had arranged to have dinner Wednesday night at the lodge. When we arrived at the lodge we found Wyatt and Madison expertly setting the table while Jennifer finished up the meal in the kitchen. When all was done Jennifer set out a wonderful roast chicken with a really good fettuccine alfredo, some garlic bread to die for, and other assorted fixings. She and the kids sat down joined us, which made L and N quite happy, and then about halfway through Ryan came in from his prep for the upcoming bear hunting season and joined us too. It was really fun to talk with them about their experiences running the camp and their plans for it. They'd been at it about three years.
Later that evening Grampy got "home" and we all went out to the fire pit up by the swimming pool and stoked up a fire big enough for that camping essential - the marshmallow roast. L and N had their sticks poised and Mommy had the requisite graham crackers and Hershey's chocolate bars at the ready. Once again I was disappointed to find so few of my immediate family had developed the finer appreciation for the thoroughly torched marshmallows. Only Grampy could appreciate the beauty of blackness; everyone else merely warmed their marshmallows a scant degree or two above room temp and declared it "roasted." How could they be any further from the truth?
Mimi and Stacy eventually took the highly sticky grandkids back into the cabin for their showers and PJs. Grampy and I sat out for a while talking economics and politics. Eventually Dad retired and Stacy came back for an unprecedented second installment of Steve-Stacy aloneness! We had put out the fire and were amazed by how bright the sky was. We walked down closer to the shoreline and spent another few precious minutes watching the rather frequent shooting stars plummeting into the woods and listening to the occasional lament of some broken-hearted loon out on the lake.
1 comment:
Nice photos! I especially like the one of the Adirondack chairs by the lake, it seems to typically Maine. It's only missing a large moose standing out in the water, maybe you should Photo Shop one in?
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