Loony Times, Catching Fish and Company Coming!

Loony Times, Catching Fish and Company Coming!

“I wish I had my camera!”…how many times have I said this lately?  Too many, that’s for sure.  The other day there was a hatch of moths and the fish were jumping like crazy in front of our site.  The boys were gone for the day to Bolton Creek for supplies so I thought I’d take my rod and see if I could fool at least one fish into thinking my hook was a moth.  I walked down to the water and noticed a loon swimming around close to shore.  I thought…”darn…don’t have my camera with me!”…”oh well, it will probably fly or swim away when I get too close”.  The thing is that the bird didn’t fly away.  As I came closer it came closer to me.  It swam right to the shore and sat there in the water and waited till I got within a foot or two of it.  I really wanted to touch it but, boy, do they have long sharp beaks.  I was afraid I’d get my hand pecked if I got any closer.  I could see that it had bands on both of its legs.  I wondered if it was hurt or something as this behavior is quite unnatural for these birds but it didn’t seem to be.  He sat there watching me and I watched him for about five minutes and then he slowly swam away.  There were hundreds, if not thousands of small fish at shore so maybe he was just so full of fish that he couldn’t move…what’s the saying?  Too fat to fly!  It was a pretty amazing experience…I wish I’d had my camera with me!

So the boys, Nick and Jake, have been with us for almost three weeks now.  They were getting pretty frustrated because they hadn’t caught any fish, other than a big sucker that Nick got.  One of the guys who’d been staying in the campground for a couple weeks and who we had gotten to know asked if the boys would like to come fishing out on his boat with him.  They jumped at the chance and off they went.  The results are in the picture.  Between the three of them they caught two nice fish which the boys cooked up in the beer batter they had been anxious to use.  A couple days later we went to town and the boys bought a little blow up boat so they could fish from it rather than from shore all the time.  I’m glad they finally got a fish…I’m sure there will be more to come now that they have a boat of their own!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we often dumpster dive for cans and bottles that our campers throw away rather than recycle.  We’ve got these long, grabber type of tools for it so don’t really have to go too far in to get the cans.  It bugs the heck out of me to see all those cans and bottles going into the landfill and so we pull them out of the trash.  So far this year we’ve got just over a thousand dollars in recycling, most of it from the dumpsters.  It turns out that Jake and Nick are avid dumpster divers now too…especially after finding the party barge in a dumpster a few weeks ago.  They’ve had quite a bit of fun with that.  Unfortunately, Jake had what he called a “traumatic” experience with a baby diaper while dumpster diving.  I don’t think he did more than see it, but guess that was enough.  Tom said it was lucky it was a baby diaper and not an adult diaper!  That’s my guy…always seeing the bright side of things!

We are gearing up for a very busy long weekend.  Last night was Wednesday and we were full already!  That’s a first on a weeknight for this year.  Often people will come up before the long weekend on a Monday or Tuesday and put a tent or something on a site then pay for the week and leave until Friday night when they actually come back to camp.  That’s what happened this week and so we’ve been a bit busier than usual.

 

The deer seem to be sticking around our site and we see them very often.  There are a couple of does and at least one buck.  The bucks have beautiful velvety antlers and are quite striking.

 I drove the boys across the lake to a site where they could put their boat in and then float back to our camp.  On the way we saw a lovely herd of Rocky Mountain Sheep…at least one baby in the mix.  He sure did stick close to his mama!

Our boss had a couple of trucks break down this past week so we need to say goodbye to the white silverado we've been driving and go back to "old red" as Tom calls it.  I kind of like driving it better anyway cuz it's a standard...she's old but reliable (so far).

 

Our company is coming on the weekend of August 8/9/10 and I’m sure looking forward to it.  Doesn’t seem to be as many people as we’d hoped, but we’ll still have a great time visiting and getting to know each other all over again.   It’s been quite a few years since I’ve seen some of the cousins…will be good to see them again!