Camping at McDonald Lake

My dad loved to fish. He would often spend the day working in the fields until just before sunset and head to the river to catch a walleye or northern. I never did enjoy the fishing as much as my dad. I suppose no one could. The mold was broken when he was born.
I said I did not enjoy fishing as much as my dad. That does not mean I had less fun on a fishing trip. Some of my antics probably disappointed my dad. I know he loved to tell the stories of his conquests to family and friends. I rarely stayed at my fishing post and caught as many as expected. Dad would flail the water until there was total darkness. Not me.
Nonetheless, I was often part of his fishing adventures. I would eagerly help load the car with our supplies. I would help get the boat into the water. One trip did not include the rest of our family. And, it was overnight. My dad and I were joined in our fishing camping trip by a family friend of my dad's. I think it was Leonard White.
This trip was really fun. Dad had made arrangements to camp next to McDonald Lake in a pasture. We were within walking distance of a regular campground about a quarter mile away. But, the campground probably cost more than we could afford. So, here we were, camped where you had to be careful where you stepped or your shoe would smell for a long time. The place had what I wanted. I could go for a stroll up into the trees and return with an armful of firewood. The lush green grass was a guarantee that a fire would not spread.
Dad went out fishing many times and left me at the campsite. Perfect with me be cause I could move about. Sitting in a boat was way to restrictive for me. I remember the pots and pans from moms kitchen. I remember the jars of produce from our pantry. This is the likely place that I learned to appreciate a personal fire. If you built a large fire, it was of little use for anything except warming one side of your body at a time. But, if you controlled your fire, you could move the fire aside enough to expose the coals. Then you could rest a pan on these coals.
I am sure dad caught many fish on this trip. I started figuring out some of life's important truths. The chief lesson was "More is not necessarily better".
KB

Camp Firewood

Kids and a dog! Boy does that bring back memories. But then, my dog, Bear was not your ordinary dog. Bear would do anything I wanted him to do. He would have killed himself to do things my daughters dreamed up for him to do.
As a young family, we often went camping. It is no different today that firewood is very expensive if you wait to buy it at the campground. To save that expense, I would always haul a supply with me in the back of the pickup. I pulled a travel trailer and Kathy followed with the car and boat. We liked to launch the boat with the pickup, so as soon as we got to our camping site, we would unload all the stuff from the back of the pickup.
I was amazed at how the two daughters could con Bear into carrying all the firewood from the pickup to their chosen spot to pile the wood. His tail would wag like it was the best thing ever. One daughter would be in the back of the pickup and the other at the wood pile. Bear would run to the back of the pickup and put his paws up on the tailgate. He would accept the wood in his mouth, turn and trot to the wood pile and drop the wood onto the ground. This played out until all the pieces were in the stack of wood.
Recently, I suggested that one of my daughters should write about this memory. I was surprised that they do not remember this story. Stephanie accused me of early stages of dementia in a recent blog, so I could be off. I think it makes a great story even if my memory is over active. I think both girls will acknowledge that Bear was a willing helper and a wonderful dog.
Kayak Bandit

Snapping Turtles

I am not very proud of my role in this story I am about to relate to you. I was quite young at the time and also times were different when I was a youngster.
I was a Huck Finn of sorts. I spent a lot of time on the Leaf River as well as Wing River. Our township drew it's name from the Wing River. The Horseagers lived right by the town hall meeting house. The road to town took a sharp turn and crossed the river here, and logically the bridge was know as Horseager's Bridge.
Mrs Horseager was a widow. She had a nephew my age that would come up from the Twin Cities to stay for the summer. I can't remember his name, but we hung out together on the river. I had a homemade boat that you could push up and down the river with the aid of a duckbill pole. The pole gets it name from the foot on the end of the pole. The foot opens as you push and retracts when you pull back. This allows you to push against mud and the pole will not sink into the mud more than you can pull it back out.
Upstream from the bridge was a wonderful fishing hole for northern pike. On this occasion, we had pushed our way up to fish and were returning when I spotted a very large snapping turtle swimming slowly along the bottom in about six or eight feet of water. I had a spear ready because there often were suckers in this stretch of river and they were very good smoked. My dad could make shoe leather taste good in his smoke house, so I don't know whether it was his recipe or the suckers that made for good eating.
Recently I had heard some old timers talking about snake meat. They agreed that snake meat tastes a lot like turtle. In general, I took it to mean that turtle was good eating. The turtle was swimming with his long neck fully extended. I took careful aim and speared the turtle in the neck. When I got the turtle to the side of the boat, he was huge and his head and mouth were very scary. My friend pushed the boat to shore and we drug the turtle up to the wood pile. Here it gets rather gory. We just wanted to dispatch this turtle so we could eat it. It was not easy. It did everything it could to keep it's neck pulled back into it's own shell. We kept trying to do the opposite so we could make a clean chop with the axe. We took much longer to complete this than I want to admit.
Once we succeeded, we left the turtle to succumb as a chicken always does. The turtle did not cavort around like a chicken. It just started crawling toward the river. This was so unnerving. We would pick it up and put it back on the grass, and again it would start crawling toward the river. Our patience ran out and we drove a nail through one of it's feet and hung it on the side of the woodshed. We left it and returned to the river. As evening descended, we parked the boat and checked on the turtle. To our amazement, it was still struggling. We agreed that we would leave it over night and clean it to eat in the morning.
In the morning, it appeared that life had left the turtle, but as soon as we started to handle it, it again started moving. We were very perplexed. The short version of a very long story is that eventually we gave up trying to clean this turtle. We dug a big hole and buried it.
What I marvel at is why we did not recruit someone to help us deal with this. As we began the whole ordeal, we had good intentions. But for goodness sakes, why we ended up wasting it, and dishonoring it's life, troubles me to this day. To come clean with the whole story would have been to tell that we got a second, but slightly smaller turtle later. I cannot remember if it was the same day or not. It sticks in my mind that they were nineteen and seventeen pounds.
I am intrigued by snapping turtles. They are virtually unchanged since prehistoric times. They catch their food by forcing their mouth open to a point that it locks open. Their tongue has an appendage that looks just like a worm. When a fish tries to feast on the worm, the turtles mouth snaps violently shut. The fish has no chance.
I doubt this story makes a lot of sense. The whole thing is hard for me. I just thought I would try to relate it to you for what it is worth.
Kayak Bandit

Gas Prices

Has everyone had enough of the high price of gas yet? I have. It is getting in the way of seeing my grandkids.
Steph called today saying she had been trying to arrange a surprise trip to visit me with her four kids. When it came right down to deciding she had to side with frugality. It is just under four hundred miles and the cost of fuel alone would have been close to two hundred dollars. When you add in all the other costs of traveling it put it over the top.
I hope we are not forever hostage to these prices. I still have a nice pickup and camper that I am not using at all this year. When I haul the camper and tow my boat, the pickup only gets about seven miles to the gallon. That mean a trip of eight hundred miles would cost around four hundred and fifty dollars in fuel alone.
So the next thought is to sell the truck. The truth is that you cannot even give the truck away. So I am stuck.
I hope we have the political will to find better ways to supply our energy needs for the long term while drilling to supply our needs for the short term. I suspect the urgency is helping to find alternatives. There will be some breakthroughs when someone sees a way to profit from their effort. Let's be grateful to that person.
Steph, I hope we can get together soon.
Kayak Bandit '(*!*)'