May 21, 2012 -- At Leech Lake

Despite not falling asleep last night until nearly 2:30 a.m. -- I'm obviously still on Pacific Time -- I was wide awake at 7:00 a.m. I guess being at Leech Lake again has me excited, making it hard to sleep.

The temperature this morning was a cool 45 degrees on its way to a high of 74 degrees, the sky was mostly sunny with some cloud cover, and the wind was out of the SSW at 8 mph.

By just after 8:00 a.m., there were three boats stationed in front of the house fishing for walleye. This spot from Second Duck Point north to Malay's cabin is a popular destination for walleye fishermen, and our house happens to fall right in the middle of that span.

After getting a pot of coffee started, I did a quick walk around the properties. I opened up the cabin and powered up the well pump. I checked out the new toilet in the cabin bathroom before opening up the "fish" garage and the game room. Everything seemed to be in order.

I noticed that the lake water covered six of the cement pylons at the boat ramp, which is about average for this time of year. I'll take another reading on Memorial Day.

I noticed on the small road between the house and cabin a small tree, maybe 5-inches in diameter, had fallen. I'll need to get the chain saw out later and cut that up.

T&K was supposed to come out last week to clean up the yard and mow the grass, but they failed to do so so the grass is nearly shin-high on me. I called T&K to find out when they were going to come out, and they promised to be out today; we'll see.

I got the lights around the harbor at the house set to come on at sunset, and replaced of couple of the burned out halogen bulbs. There's still so much to do! I've got to get the boat in the water, get the power run out to the boat lift, get the canopy on the lift and the move all of the fishing gear from the garage onto the boat. And that's just to get the boat ready.

There's also chores such as taking down the storm windows and putting up the screens. Getting the deck furniture out of storage from the garage, cleaning it up and then moving it onto the back porch. Setting up the hammock. Getting the fish shed water pump primed and connected so we have water running to the outdoor faucets so we can water the yard, plus water running in the shed, which is important when I'm cleaning fish.

And these are all just normal "opening-up-the-cabin-for-the-season" chores. The big project I've got slated for this summer is to stain the house. It's supposed to be done every 10 years and it's been 11 since it was last done. For that project I'll have to first power-wash the entire house and then let it dry thoroughly before I can stain it. With Rick's help, I'm hoping that the staining project takes no more than three days tops.
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Rick's plane arrived on time, and soon we had loaded the truck with groceries and other supplies. It was time to go pick up the boat at Corner Sports. Despite having contacted them 10 days earlier to tell them I'd be picking up the boat on Friday, May 18, and then calling them late in the day on Friday to tell them I'd be picking up the boat first thing Monday morning, the boat still was not ready when we stopped by a 2:30 p.m.

This is the second year in a row Corner Sports has not had my boat ready on time. I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt, again, but if this happens next year as well I'm going to have to complain to the store manager. The service manager was kind enough to call down to his favorite local tavern and pay for a Rick and I each to have a beer while we waited, but the delay set us back significantly and may have cost us a day or two on the water.

By the time we finally got the boat to Leech Lake it was nearing 5:30 p.m. and since I had had little sleep the night before, and since Rick had been traveling all day, we didn't have the energy to get the boat in the water this evening. So we left it attached to the truck, sitting at the top of the boat ramp at the cabin.

After hauling all of our supplies over to the house and putting the groceries away, we relaxed with a cold beer before wandering next door to visit with John Newman for an hour or so. The skies had clouded over by 8:00 p.m. and every now and again a few drops would fall on us, but it never did rain; until well after midnight.

We called it a night early, before 11:00 a.m., with plans of getting the boat in the water on Tuesday morning, weather permitting. That's it for tonight, more tomorrow from the shores of Leech Lake.