June 6--we took Ray's mom to the 25th wedding anniversary of Ray's Aunt Wanda and Joe. It was a good time and especially nice to see cousins and 2nd cousins we haven't seen in over 10 years. Wanda & Joe had a beautiful party put on by Wanda's daughters Mona (right) and Laia (left).
Ray & I have had an opportunity to get in some golfing. I spent a lot of time in the basement sorting through hundreds of decorations for holidays that are never spent at home any longer. I packed the truck completely full and we dropped it off at St. Paul's for their yearly garage sale. Then I had time to continue the process and I packed the car from top to bottom and had only the driver's seat to spare. I dropped that off the day the sale started and was so glad to have all that stuff out of our house. I still have more to do--my goal is to have everything in its place before my surgeries!
We got a chance to get my brother Kerry out on the bay out of Quanicassee for a day of walleye fishing. The weather was not as predicted and we had 3-4 footers. Kerry was a trooper for his first time on the big water. We came home with 4 walleye and had Kerry & Elaine over for dinner afterwards.
One more trip to Dad's eye specialist and dinner at Zehnder's with Mom & Dad and Larna before we headed out on the 14th for Burt Lake. Our first trip on the water netted us only one keeper walleye. Our friends Dan & Peg were up there as well and Ray & Danny went out twice and got skunked. We did end up with three more keepers the final time we got out to fish. Dan & Peg left on Thursday (19th) and Ray and I did some golfing and took a ride over to Mullett Lake through the river.
Sunday, June 22 we moved to South Higgins Lake State Park. Jaime and Jeff and the kids were supposed to meet us there, but Chase's Kindergarten preparation session ended up being the same week, so they couldn't make it up this year.
We met a really nice couple from the Dayton Ohio area--Phil and Debbie-- when we were at Burt Lake. They ended up coming down to S. Higgins on Monday. They had purchased a new little Craig Cat catamaran last November and Ray was going to show them around Higgins Lake. We took Tom & Linda aboard our boat and Phil and Debbie followed in our wake with their catamaran. Ray rode a long distance with Phil and I drove our boat, concentrating and carefully watching out for all the shallow areas. Then I got to ride with Phil. It was like riding in a paddle boat, except this boat has a motor. What fun! Linda rode and finally Tom. Then Debbie took over the Craig cat and Linda joined her--it is really hard on my knees to get on and off their boat. Phil wanted to experience a quick turn on our boat, so he stayed on board as Ray was taking them to the other side of the island where we would again exchange passengers and let Phil back on his boat and Linda on ours. Well, you know how Ray likes to talk. Yup--he can't see when he is talking because his head is turned 90 degrees looking at who he is talking to. Well, you guessed it. He ran the motor into rocks. The worst part is that Debbie was trusting Ray to be leading the way and their Craig Cat suffered damage to the prop and lower unit as well. They had to replace their prop. It cracked the lower housing of our motor and tore the prop up and was leaking oil from the crack. We limped back in with Debbie limping in behind us. What a terrible experience to have happen to new friends. We felt so bad! The sad thing is--we can't take that moment of lack of judgment back. Here is a picture of what their little Craig Cat catamaran looks like.
So, Tuesday we made the decision to come home. We stopped in West Branch to play 18 holes at the country club so we didn't have to drive that far north again to use our punchcard for this course. We were shocked to see all the tornado damage they had from about three weeks earlier. The course had been closed for a week for them to clean up the trees, and they still weren't done, but they had the course playable.
We dropped the boat off in Bay City and are still awaiting the estimate which according to a place in Houghton Lake will be steep. The aluminum casing of the lower unit is $1200 alone--that's with nothing in it. We were supposed to have the estimate yesterday or today??? We'll see.
No comments:
Post a Comment