I just got home, wrote this last night.

Mon. June 30, 2008

I’m writing this entry from our family cottage, on the northwest shore of Teal Lake near Hayward, WI. There is no internet or even cell phone coverage within a half an hour, so I’m writing this and I’ll post it when I can. You know when you see those coverage maps or red dots on a map showing all the great places that you’ll be “covered”, well Teal Lake is one of those areas that is just always white! The truth is, I wouldn’t want it any other way.

This has been a great little trip. I wish we weren’t heading home tomorrow afternoon but one of the younglings that Luke brought, Dakota (Lizardo) really wants to go to his last day of summer school on Wednesday morning and I promised I’d get him home for it. We got to the cottage about 8:00 PM on Sunday, took the cover off the pontoon boat and went for a ride around the lake. Teal has six islands on it and on the shore of one of them, Raspberry, there was a gorgeous eagle perched pretty low in a tree that we floated fairly close to. As he flew off (due to our gawking) his silhouette against the setting sun and purple sky looked like a picture from a postcard. It brought me great joy when I heard Luke’s other buddy, Sam, describe the exact scene to his mother later that night on the phone and sum it up by saying “it was like the ending of a movie, mom.”

After our ride, we took Little Tate (Thompson) to his skate camp, Lake Owen, which only about twenty minutes from here, in a town called Cable, Where they have a famous cross country ski race, the Birkebiner and a nearly equally favorite mountain bike ride, called “The Fat Tire”. Little Tate’s dad, Tim had called me early yesterday morning to see if we’d bring him with us, because he was a little under the weather and had missed his ride. At Lake Owen, I bumped into a former student of mine, Kaeley, who works there for the summers. I had no idea... and she was even more shocked to see me there. She said she couldn’t believe her eyes, but as soon as she heard me, she new it was me. I get that all the time, I really should make some cash doing some vocal work, or maybe I’ll become a singer. My nephew, Jens, really loved the place, so maybe he’ll be able to come to the camp next year, when he makes his annual pilgrimage from Texas to visit us. Yeah, I could drop him off at the camp and then I’ll sing at the bowling alley all that week.

This morning, I set my alarm for 4:45 to get the boys up and go on an Elk sighting trip. About twelve years ago the DNR reintroduced a small herd to an area near Clam Lake. They have done great, the herd has grown and so has the area that they claim as their territory, which is now within about two miles from Teal Lake. It took about 15 minutes, but we saw our first one, a young bull, all by himself, standing in the middle of highway 77. He looked at us for a while and then took off. A little further up the road toward Clam Lake, we happened upon a group of seven of them, a few bulls in that group, too. I decided to go a little bit past Clam Lake and we were rewarded by seeing a pretty good sized Black Bear! I love to be a wildlife guide.

We all took, a little nap after our Elk-venture, had a big “second breakfast” of eggs and Nueske’s bacon... if you’ve never had Nueske’s, well, it’s about as special as it gets. Working on a sponsorship deal. I’ll wear one of their shirts when I sing at the bowling alley.

The afternoon/evening activities consisted of some tree-climbing, red rider shooting, adventuring and fishing on another one of the great islands, McKnot. We grilled some hamburgers, hot dogs, beans and “teal lake” potatoes over an open fire, followed up with some s’mores... which is, of course, redundant. Get it? During the meal, I told the boys about the legendary Mr. McKnot, who, we were told as youngsters, discovered the lakes in this area. We also believed that this island was where he used to camp out. I’m pretty sure my brother and I made up that part of the legend. Tate (big Tate Sampson), thought that “Mr. McKnot“ would be a great anti-drug character to go speak in schools. I agreed and thought that he could go with “Mr. McDoo” to show what might happen if bad choices were made. Maybe I’ll develop that as a way to make some extra cash when the bowling alley gig doesn’t pan out.

We ended the night with one of my ridiculously made up bed-time stories. I had never made one up that included Musky, Elk and an environmentally-friendly NASCAR race called the “Elkianapolis 500”, but it turned out pretty good.

I’ll close this post with an ‘animals we’ve seen’ tally from the last 24 hours:

Dozens of Whitetail Deer
A dozen Fish
8 Elk
half a dozen Eagles
3 Foxes
2 Wild Turkeys
2 Loons (one really close up, like 10 feet close)
Ducks
Great Blue Herons
1 huge Turtle (the size of one of those temporary spare tires)
1 Black Bear
1 really, really stinky Puggle (I’d be glad to tell you the story of the really, really stinky Puggle, but I’m too tired and as my friend Brad Knapp says, “always leave ‘em hungry for something more.” Goodnight.)