September 7-8, 2012 -- At Leech Lake

On Friday morning September 7 I woke up freezing. While the temperatures have been cooler, they haven't dropped far enough to make the house truly cold, until today. We had several of the windows open, so I went around the house closing them in preparation for turning on the furnace.

With the windows closed I went to the thermostat to turn on the heat and saw that the temperature in the house was only 60 degrees. I turned the furnace up to 68 and waited for the house to warm up.

Outside the sky was mostly cloudy, the temperature was only 52 degrees and the wind was howling at 15-25 mph out of the WNW. A very cool, blustery day at Leech Lake. And several times throughout the day the sky would darken and a light rain would fall for a few minutes. Nothing heavy, just enough to keep the ground and trees damp, thus making the day seem even cooler.

With waves pounded the shoreline and white caps on the lake, Joe and I didn't see any boats on the water until just after 6:00 p.m. when John and Karen Newman decided to brave the heavy seas for some perch fishing. John has been up at the lake for a day or two, but Karen arrived just today. John had mentioned to me that Karen really wanted to get out and do some fishing, and lucky for them the wind had calmed a bit, but it was still a little too rough for me to want to venture out onto.

Instead, Joe and I spent a quiet day at home. I spent most of the late morning and early afternoon working on a work presentation, while Joe read and played some video games.

Later in the day, just before sunset, Joe found his old HO slot car track and cars and decided to take them next door and set it up on the ping pong table in the game room. For the next several hours Joe and I raced the little slot cars around the track. We both had forgotten how much fun it can be.

Joe watching the sunset over Sucker Bay, Leech Lake

The weather on Saturday was even more harsh than on Friday. The wind was blowing at speeds between 20-30 mph out of the WNW, the temperature never got up over 60 degrees and the sky was grey and dark all day with occasional periods of light rain.

Joe and I decided it would be a good day to go into town for supplies. I needed to pick up some paint for the front door and trim, we needed to mail a package to Jayden and we needed groceries. We took our time getting ready and didn't actually hit the road until just after 1:00 p.m. On our drive into Bemidji we listened to the University of Minnesota football game, a game they eventually won by a score of 44-7 over the University of New Hampshire.

When we had completed our tasks in Bemidji we stopped in Cass Lake on the drive home to pick up a couple of pizzas. We had invited John and Karen Newman over for a simple dinner and some conversation. At 7:30 p.m. John stopped by without Karen. Apparently she had gotten up much too early in the day and was tired, so she stayed at home while John had pizza with us.

After John went home, Joe and I stayed up and watched some DVDs before going to bed.

Good night from Leech Lake.