Departure Day - The Last First

As per usual on my Michigan trips. the blog is lagging hopelessly behind. We've been at the lake house a week, and I've yet to make a single post.  To deal with this situation I am implementing my usual solution, which is to post something - anything -  somewhere in the middle of the gap and start blogging at both ends. Hopefully we catch up at some point.

We'll begin at an end - the last post of cousins Ken, Donna, Adam and Davids first trip to Shag Lake. It was great fun having them here, and although their trip was short, we packed a lot into it including a number of "Firsts": first visit, Adam's first fish, our cumulative first fishing experience in a snow storm on a pontoon boat, the first geocache experience, and my first ever loss in a game of Hearts. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

But I digress... As a proper sendoff, we also had a farewell dinner on the grill.

Steaks with a soy sauce sesame oil marinade, campfire potatoes, steamed asparagus with a lemon garlic sauce, and a selection of grilled veggies including onions, garlic, peppers and mushrooms. 

It was good.

The Mystery of Coyote Island

After over half a century of visiting Shag Lake, it's always fun to find something new. This trip, cousin Wanda Challon introduced us to the sport of Geocaching. It started as soon as they arrived. First step is always to get a fishing license secured. While waiting for the staff at Tall Timbers to go thorugh the annual ritual of figuring out how to use the computerized fishing license system, Wanda announced she'd identified a geocache in the neighborhood.

By the time we got the license, she added a notch on her geocache belt. Who knew we'd find these around Shag Lake? I soon learned the next logical step for a true geocache enthusiast after finding a new cache in a new location, is to leave a new cache in a new location.  I had a suggestion. The island in Mitchell Lake. Wanda agreed. And so it came to be that the expedition was formed to explore this undiscovered country. Not the island itself. We've been exploring that for decades... I mean the this new geocache game... well you know what I mean. We launched a geocache raid on Coyote Island.

Through the channel to the island...

Looking for a suitable landing.

Who named this island anyway?

I hate that name. There are no coyote's on the island. We should call it "Crawdad Island" or "West Nile Virus Island" or "Black Fly Island" or pretty much anything else.

Whatever. Once we landed, I explained that if anyone charged with holding the boat let it go, they would swim to retrieve it. 

We had no problems, and got to the task at hand. 

Wanda scouted the island and applied her expertise.

The deed is done. Now, to throw off the satellite observers, we casually hung out for a while to pretend like nothing happened.

It was a clean escape.

First Fish

On our first outing, Adam gets the first fish.

Uncle Sam loved fishing. All the more reason why it was important to have his kids and grandkids introduced to fishing on Shag Lake.  That said, the weather was not what we would normally consider to be optimal for a pleasurable day on the lake. But, we only had a couple of days, so...

Despite the inclement weather, we were able to prevail, and between the dock and pontoon boat, we had some success and caught some fish.

Adam also caught the largest fish

Which by default also gave Adam "Most Fish" honors. A clean sweep.

More fishing was attempted from the dock, with some additional success.

Unfortunately David was skunked.

But David did successfully ignite the bonfire with one match, and  won at Hearts and Chess. So there is that.

While we did not have enough for a full fry, we did prepare the fish caught by our newest visitor as an appetizer for their farewell feast.  

First Fire

The weather was a bit unsettled for our first-time visitors to the lake. In fact, it was srlsy cold.

Cold, rainy, cold, windy, cold, snowy and more cold. But, we were determined to do some fishing (more on that later), and caught a few, but not enough for a fry. With no fish, we needed to work on other dinner plans.

Ken & Donna insisted on buying us dinner, so we took then to the finest in local cuisine, the Up North Lodge.

A bonfire is a necessary part of the Shag Lake experience. On the drive home, I pointed our guests to felled trees to fuel the fire. They did a nice job of collection.

I also provided expert guidance on my "Make a Giant Pile of Wood and Burn it All at Once" bonfire construction technique.

It almost seems a shame to burn a work of art like this...

... but we did.

David successfully ignited the bonfire with a single match.

Some chose to enjoy the fire from the comfort of the house. 

Others succumbed to the temptation of campfire s'mores, as seen in this disturbing series of images.

All in all, a world class conflagration.