Friday Morning Cleaning Fish with Grandpa

Chloe was up early this morning to take Grandma Sharon to the playground.  They were out of the house before anyone else was awake.

I was still rubbing sleep out of my eyes but hurried to grab my camera because I knew Papa was headed out to clean the fish.  Owen was still sound asleep back on the homefront and Todd was just rolling out of bed.  It was barely 8am.  Pretty sunny for so early, no?  Chloe was interested in seeing how Papa Wenzel would clean the fish and wandered over to the Fish Cleaning House after she saw him pull up in the golf cart and walk in.  

She was fascinated from the moment she walked in.

Watching him carefully as he used the electric knife dangling from the ceiling to fillet the dozen or two croppies.

The fish were flipping themselves out of the bucket just in time to be the next one on the cutting board.  If they only knew....they would have flipped themselves toward the back of the bucket!

Bean took a short break to watch the fishing minnows in the sink, but quickly hurried back to her spot.

These croppies aren't the prettiest fish, but they are some of the most delicious.  They are also very slimy, leaving a slippery coating on your fingers after touching them.  Every time I remove one of these guys from my hook, I have to reach overboard to dip my fingers in the lake to rinse them off.

Surprisingly, Chloe did not fill the air with questions or even idle chatter.  She quietly watched almost the whole time.

She leaned in to watch closely and was very interested in the whole fish preparation process.

After a good fifteen minutes of watching, she summoned up enough courage to start touching the fish.  I was curious to see if she would poke at the eyeballs, but apparently that is not a genetic fascination (I was wretched as a child and mercilessly poked and prodded fish eyeballs as they awaited my Dad's knife for cleaning fish.  Thankfully I grew out of that!).  Chloe just petted the fish with one or two fingers from their faces back to the tails.

She was showing me that her two fingers were not gross after touching the fish. :)

I liked watching the boats zoom by outside.

My little monkey was standing on her tip toes on top of a tall bucket so she could see everything that was happening up on the fish cleaning counter.

As Papa neared the end of the line for cleaning fish, Chloe helped dump them out on the counter for him.

I think this is the first time I have ever seen her gently pet any creature.  Perhaps there was still a small amount of fear and respect that these strange creatures might get her if she wasn't gentle.

And suddenly, she had the courage to pick up the fish and hold them!  I was stunned.  On the boat, she was a squealing little girl, afraid to touch the fish.

"Here Papa!"

She's turning that poor fish upside down!

Look!  She can hold TWO fish at the same time!

I think she was pretending that she was making the fish swim again.

Fish(ing)

We had fried fish and fresh sweet potato fries tonight for dinner.  Papa Wenzel cooked them all up in his little frier.

Mmmmm.  Sizzling to perfection!

See?  This is the most delicious fish ever!

After dinner, the kids wanted to go rollerblading on the basketball court.

It was a perfect evening.

The kids were not intimidated when the teenagers showed up to play basketball.  They just kept on rollerblading.

I had planned on a quiet night of fishing with Papa Wenzel, but the kids invited themselves along and the air was filled with questions and anything but quiet.  Surprised?

Chloe caught a fish and reeled it in all by herself.  This one wasn't a keeper, but she caught others that were big enough to keep.

Grandma helped get the fish off the hook.  Yay Grandma!

Chloe, always my silly goat, had to push her face through the net to watch me closely and see what I was doing.

Owen was dancing in his seat.

We drove back fast once we were done fishing.  The wind blew all of the hair out of my sweet Bean's face.

The Organizer

This is what Owen does in his free time Up North if he's not swimming, boating, fishing, kicking the soccer ball, eating or sleeping.  

He pulls out all of the boxes inside his tackle box and stares at the contents.

He rearranges some and puts others back in the same place.

He talks about going shopping for more lures and watches intently as Papa Wenzel pulls out items from his own tackle box.

He sighs contentedly as he puts everything back in his tacklebox.  This is the good life.  My boy is happiest with the simple things.

Running from Dorset

Todd and I drove into Park Rapids this morning for some groceries.  It is about a fifteen minute drive.  On the way back, we stopped in Dorset to catch the Heartland Trail so he could run and I could rollerblade.  The view wasn't much different from yesterday in Nevis on the trail.

Along the entire trail are birdhouses for wood ducks, always found in pairs like this.  Some are still available for birds/ducks while others have been gnawed at to allow squirrel access.  Apparently, the wood ducks are not only small to fit into such tight quarters and through such small holes, but they're shy, too.  We never saw a wood duck.

I saw more flowers along the trail today.  I love stumbling upon Black Eyed Susans growing wild like this!

There were occasional dandelions as big as my fist, like this one.

We are trying to be good about exercising.  Setting good habits on vacation that we intend to keep going once we get home.  It will be easy for the first two and a half weeks....when we have no parental responsibilities.  The challenge will be to continue after I fly the kids home.

Sunset

It was around 9:30 when I noticed the sun was going down.  I wanted to get some pictures at the lake, so I grabbed my tripod and Todd and we walked down together.  It was quiet.  No one was on the lake that we could see, although one boat came back to shore while I was shooting.

I learned that for good sunset pictures, it helps if there are clouds.  Many more clouds than these few puny ones we had.  But this was good practice for setting up my tripod and slowing down the shutter speed to almost half a minute for some exposures.

I had wanted to get up before dawn to take pictures at the lake as the sun is rising, but this morning I realized that my body is truly in vacation mode and incapable of being happily awake before dawn.  So I'll try to catch some more sunsets on our four remaining days Up North.

Afternoon Fishing Trip

When Chloe woke up from her nap, she was ready to go fishing.  

We thought Owen would be fishing from the dock when we walked down there, but he was gone and so was the boat.  There were tears.

Phone calls were placed and promises made to come pick up the Bean.  While we waited, she fished in the weeds.

It didn't take long before we saw her ride.

She was on the boat in a flash and ready to go.  "Goodbye Mommmmmm!"

And then they were gone.

As I was walking back up the dock, I saw two mallards fishing.

Up North

We left Rochester a little after 4pm and got stuck in rush hour traffic in the Twin Cities.  It added more time to the drive and more prayers as we sat on top of a bridge for a good fifteen minutes that vibrated and shook.  I'm not keen about sitting on bridges that shake and Todd added he isn't fond of sitting on Minnesota bridges (it was just last year that a couple collapsed during rush hour).  So we prayed.  I took deep breaths and Todd fought off hyperventilating and nausea.  And we got through it and off the bridge.

As we drove through Royalton, we saw this mural on the side of one of the buildings.  We saw quite a few real deer on our drive after we past this spot.

When we arrived at Papa Wenzel's and Grandma Sharon's, there was a fire roaring in the fire pit.

The kids were excited to roast marshmallows!  But they didn't hang around long.  They needed to run all over the resort to see who else was here that they remembered.  They needed to ride on the golf cart and play on the playground.

The next morning, Todd and I drove into Nevis (hence the blurry picture as I rushed to snap the shot before we passed the sign) so he could run and I could rollerblade.

The Heartland Trail is an old train track that has been paved over, which makes for a nice flat trail for exercising.

There are pretty flowers along the trail.

And plenty of prairie grass on each side.  We stopped a few times, just to watch the prairie grass blow and sway in the wind.  Seeing fields of it move is absolutely mesmerizing.

Here is the dock to 8th Crow Wing Lake.  The water and the sky were both so very blue.

Owen has been spending much of his free time organizing his tackle box and begging for more supplies or lures.  I came down to the dock with Papa Wenzel so he could grab his own tackle box to show Owen.