June 27, 2009 -- At Leech Lake

I returned home from St. Cloud last evening. I had spent Thursday, June 25 and Friday, June 26 at my mother-in-law's (Marge) house. She and I had a very nice visit. On Thursday, we ran a bunch of errands around town. On Friday, in celebration of the 28th anniversary of me marrying Kathleen, Marge's daughter, Marge and I went to the Newman Center Catholic Church for a noon-time mass. I sure wish Kathleen could have been in Minnesota with me.

Mid-afternoon on Friday I went to the grocery store, loaded up on supplies and headed back to Leech Lake. The temperature in St. Cloud had been 89 degrees and humid, but by the time I got to Leech Lake at 7:00 p.m., the temperature had cooled to 80 degrees; although it was still humid.

Kathleen's brother Tim and his son Jackson arrived around 9:00 p.m. on Friday night. They plan to stay until mid-day Sunday. I hope the weather is good enough for us to go out fishing.

I awoke on Saturday morning to rain. The temperature 70 degrees, the air is humid and the sky is gray and rainy. The wind is out of the WSW at 8-12 mph. I don't think Tim and Jackson have rain gear, so unless they feel like getting soaking wet while fishing, we might have to wait until this storm passes to go fishing.

As the day progressed, the wind picked up, sometimes with gusts out of the west nearing 30 mph, and the sky darkened further and rain continued to fall. Finally, around 7:00 p.m. the sky began to clear, and the wind began to let up a little, but it was still too rough to go fishing comfortably.

After dinner, Tim, Jackson and I got a fire going in the fire pit at the cabin, played ping pong and pinball, and just hung out. John Newman joined us at the fire pit around 9:30 p.m. At 11:30 p.m., I doused the fire and everyone went home to bed.

Although we couldn't fish today because of the high winds, we all had a very pleasant day at Leech Lake.