Monday, June 05, 2006

A Windy Weekend At Tulaby

Friday June 2nd, Started the day by mowing the lawn at the house on Edinbrook Terrace. The lawn was much more wet than the last time, but oh well. Afterwards, I quickly packed up a bunch of clothes, showered, and at around 12:20 I left for the Employment Center of the State Fair on Como and Cathline to pick up the Kristen. Kristen was able to get off work early around 1:00 PM. From there we picked up her stuff at the Chateau in Dinkeytown and then rushed home to BP. After all that rushing, My Mom, Kristen, and myself all piled into the New Explorer with all our stuff for the weekend and started heading towards ER (Elk River) to rendezvous with the Dad who was getting off of work at 2:30.

We Left the BP at 2:05 PM, and as soon as we hit 610 to merge with highway 10, we called Dad and told him that we were on our way, he replied with a “should’ve left sooner” when we were doing the best we could. Traffic was pretty nuts through ER, lots of people heading North, eventually we met up with Frank Sr. just a little outside of downtown ER at one of the local Shell gas stations. Good thing we left when we did, even though the trip was pokey we still arrived at Tulaby by about 6:30 PM, and had we left any later we would have spent several hours in heavy traffic just trying to get out of the cities.

On the way up we stopped in Staples for Moo-lattes at the Dairy Queen, and at the BP station to fill the car up. Kristen, Dad, and I all had Mocha Moo-lattes while my Mom had the French Vanilla, I believe. Coffee + Ice Cream = Crazy Delicious, and was able to hold us all over until we reached the lake.

Lately we have been going through the DL (Detroit Lakes) instead of heading over on Highway 71 once we reach Wadena. It is a much more enjoyable ride, since there are 4 lanes instead of 2 lane blacktop that one must face on Highway 71. I suppose in the next few decades Highway 71 will have to be expanded as development continues to move outward and people want to continue to get to there lake cabins and seasonal homes in a timely fashion.

Anyway, upon our arrival we all got out and quickly decompressed from the long drive. Kristen, eager to begin fishing, quickly found herself a rod and began tossing off of the dock. Before dinner she caught two rock basses and we were hoping her luck would extend into the rest of the weekend. For dinner we all enjoyed some Ham and potato salad made fresh by Mom Friday morning.

Later into the evening My Dad and I put in my Grandpa’s boat and Kristen, Dad, and myself tried our hand at doing some fishing. Thank the maker we had the trolling motor on and working, because when we tried heading back to the dock, the motor wouldn’t start. Kristen was able to catch a good-sized perch, however, it spit the hook before she could set it and it nearly hit me in the eye on the way out. My Dad and I were skunked.



Kristen and I made another fire in the redesigned fire pit, and we took some pictures of the two of us enjoying the fire. The fire was really warm, and the pit of rocks allowed for a lot of the heat and oxygen to remain in, and did a good job of keeping the majority of the wind out. While Kristen and I were dinking around with the fire, the folks watched several episodes of Season 2 of The Sopranos. My Mom made some popcorn for everybody that was really delicious and made for a great snack.

Saturday started out with me mowing the back of the cabin in the woods using the lawn tractor. The four of us headed over to the access and put in My Dad’s boat, and I drove the new Explorer and the trailer back to the cabin. The 05 Explorer has a much more sensitive accelerator than the 96 Explorer and more difficult sightlines for backing up, however, a much more comfortable ride as a passenger. My Dad and I also buried over 22 dead sunfish in the woods that had washed up on our side of the lake. Saturday was very windy and the waves kept washing up dead sunfish. This strange mass “fish kill” puzzled us all to no end. The four of us went out in the boat and tried our hand at fishing, however, it was Dad and Kristen that were able to pull some fish in with dad catching a small pike, and Kristen catching yet another perch. I am starting to agree with my Dad, that the “dead sea” has us snake bitten and that we couldn’t catch a fish even if it jumped into the net.

Saturday evening, it was too windy for a fire; however, I did split some pine cuts that my Dad had saved from a tree they fell last fall. I tried using my Maul for a while, but the head kept jiggling loose. So instead of using the Maul, I used a wedge and the sledgehammer and was able to split a number of the pieces into several nice logs for burning.

We watched some Sopranos and Munich. My Dad and I made it through the entire film; however, Kristen and my Mom didn’t and went to bed without finishing. The movie was really long almost 3 hours and we started it too late. Early Saturday morning, about 3:30 Am, it started raining really hard and jolted me out of bed. I ran out to the kitchen and quickly closed the glass door to the porch, before more of the kitchen was flooded.

Sunday, all of s put the tarp on the boatlift and continued to count more and more dead sunfish washing up on shore. I counted about 60-71 before we left. The Raccoons and birds will enjoy eating those. We left the cabin at about 1:30 and arrived home at about 5:30 and enjoyed Nick and Willy’s pizza for dinner.

It was an enjoyable weekend, hopefully we can hit it again next week. Soon we’ll start all the planning for Cabin Party V happening June 30th thru July 4th.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

It was a very fun weekend!