August 27-31, 2012, In, On, and At Leech Lake

Week in Review

This was a busy week, one that kept me from making daily posts to this blog. Therefore, I thought I'd do a quick week in review. As the title of this post suggests, Joe and I spent it at Leech Lake working, we spent some time in Leech Lake swimming and to cool off, and we spent time on Leech Lake fishing. But mostly, this week was defined by our work staining the roadside and lakeside decks.

On Monday, which was a warm day in the high 70s, Joe and I started in on staining the roadside deck. We worked for nearly 6 hours straight and were able to complete the entire job. After cleaning up and putting the stain away, I set up a small barricade in front of the front stairs to keep people from walking on the freshly stained deck. Of course what I could not have predicted is a visit during the night from "Buck," the abandoned dog that makes periodic appearances at our house. Sometime during the night, the dog walked around the barricade and up onto the porch. It then walked the entire length of the porch leaving paw prints in the still sticky stain. Joe and I were not about to redo entire deck, which is what it would have taken eliminate the paw prints, so we decided to live with a few dog prints.

On Tuesday, the weather was hotter. The temperature hit a high of 85 degrees and the humidity made it very muggy. Joe and I spent 5 hours working on section 1 of the lakeside deck; which included the railing on the south end of the deck, and the fascia and other woodworking along the bottom of the deck. Afterward, we treated ourselves to a cool swim in the lake. It felt great to cool off and to get clean using our organic soap to take a camp bath.

Wednesday was hotter even still. The temperature climbed to 92 degrees and it remained humid making our staining of section 2 of the deck slow and not very comfortable. Joe and I finished the railing on the north end of the deck, including all of the fascia and other wood and then once again took a dip in the lake to cool off. Tomorrow we're taking the day off from staining to go into Bemidji. I've got to get the truck serviced -- and to finally fix the broken passenger-side power-window motor -- get groceries and run other errands.

Thursday proved to be a breezy day, with heavy cloud cover. It looked like it might rain, which wouldn't be ideal for the drying of the deck railing, but it turned out to only sprinkle around mid-afternoon. The temperature went up to 84 degrees, it felt fairly humid, and in Bemidji we saw several big flashes of lightning followed by loud claps of thunder. But, as I said, we didn't see any rain of consequence. By the time we got home, and put away all of the groceries, it was after 5:30 p.m. and I wanted to do some fishing. Joe joined me, and we fished for about 90 minutes and caught nothing but a few small perch. We were, however, treated to the sight of the full moon, a blue moon, rising in the east over the Malay's cabin.

Full moon rising over Leech Lake

NOTE: On the nature front, when Joe and I pulled into the driveway this afternoon, we spotted 9 ruffed grouse eating the fruit from our small crab apple tree. It's good to know that we have so many grouse in the area. Some day, I'd like to hunt for, and eat, some local ruffed grouse.

On Friday, Joe and I set about staining the final portion of the lakeside deck, the walking surface itself. We spent more than 6 hours on the task and by 6:00 p.m. on Friday evening we were done with our staining project. Just as we were cleaning up, our peninsula neighbor Ken Lichttenegger stopped by to give us a smoked whitefish. He has a license to net them in Leech Lake and every year he catches and smokes a number of fish. The past few years he's been kind enough to share one with me, and as in the past, it was delicious.

After we had cleaned up all the stain and the various equipment we'd used during our project, Joe and I went for a long bike ride followed by a swim in the lake. The lake water is still hovering around 74 degrees, which is plenty warm enough to go for a dip after work. It was then time to relax and have a pizza on Friday night.

It feels good to have the project complete, and now we can focus on doing some fishing. Joe wants to fish not only for walleye and perch, but largemouth bass and muskie. I'm sure we'll get in plenty of fishing during the next couple of weeks.