Here’s the swans btw. Any clue as to what they are? 
Tag Archives: polk county
Late Fall
Transitioning the cabin from Summer Mode to Winter Mode. Mostly that means getting up all the leaves, winterizing the boat motors, putting the lawn equipment away.
Late fall is incredibly quiet at the lake. After mowing and cleaning out side I spent some time sitting on the deck, the only sound.. goose calls and the occasional car passing on County Road G, a few hundred meters south of us.
Not that there wasn’t some excitement. The lake is crystal clear this time of year. Summers algae blooms have died off, the aquatic vegetation has died back, lake looks great. There were a few boats out, late fall muskie fishing. You can tell a muskie fisherman, they throw the lures so big, that even from a few hundred yards away.. you can’t mistake them. Dead chickens a friend used to say. Big gawdy spinners, 12″ long stick baits.
Saturday was a classic weather wise. Highs in the 50′s, calm.. The colors are mostly gone now, past peak as they say. Still, the Red Oaks are earning their name, they’re the last trees to turn. Deep maroons and burgundies. There were a few poplars still yellow.
While I was mowing I noticed a V-Wake along the shoreline. Furry head moving down the shore line. Beaver? Muskrat? The critter came ashore on my rocks, otter of all things. It scampered along my shore and dove under my canoe. Winter lodgings I guess. I could move the canoe and get it out of there.. but it’s what the hell, he gets free winter lodging and I get a chance to see a wild otter again. I’m hoping this winter he’ll make a slide down my hill to the lake. They’re fun critters that way.
Another feather of the lake in late fall, swans. There was a flock of about 20 swans on the lake late Saturday afternoon. Huge, graceful birds., I’m not sure if they were tundra swans or trumpeter swans.. Good buddy Ken over on Little Blake Lake has reported nesting trumpeter swans in the mashes upstream from our lake. One sure way to tell the difference, neck bands the US Dept of Fish and Game puts on swans, these birds didn’t have any, as far as I could tell. Make me think they’re migrating tundras. Still, it’s a treat to see these magnificent birds, no matter what kind of swan.
Once the work was done I spent some time just enjoying the quiet. No jet skis, no real boat noises.. just a quiet cool evening on the lake. Makes me think I’m really missing out on something not using the place so much this time of year.
I moved stuff around the garage to get ready for winter. I was pretty upset to see that mice had ripped a massive hole in my fish house. Really pissed about that. I’ll have to see if I can find a good size patch kit for the sled. Damn critters.
Next weekend, Minnesota’s deer hunting opener. It’s that time of year when the outdoors calls.
Filed under Life
Weekend Update
Nice weekend at the lake, albeit not exactly quiet. The Daughter brought 3 of her girlfriends up with her, which if you can count makes for 4 teen age girls and I, at lease Friday and the first half of Saturday.
I can’t complain, the kids were fine. Actually they’re really good kids, but I have to say Teen Age Girls and Teen Age Guys area about as different as dogs and cats. Both genders seem to find things to do at the lake. Remarkably some of the same things; fishing, kayaking, canoeing, hanging out. Boys just do it with a different amount of energy than girls do. They do it in a way that leaves things broken and usable when they’re done with it. The girls on the other hand, oddly enough, kinda put stuff back when they’re done with them, ask permission for other things and generally tread a little lighter.
Until you engage in the teasing game. Boys are easy to tease, not even much of a challenge to be honest. You point out a a couple idiosyncrasies and just like that you da man. Girls on the other hand, especially teener girls… suffice to say they started teasing me before I could even get started.
Overall the weekend was nice, a colleague from work joined me Saturday afternoon. I took the kids to the Polk County Museum in town. The museum fills the old County Courthouse in the village of Balsam Lake. The museum has a little bit of everything, lots of stuff that was obviously in the estates of various county residents. There’s sections by township, another section by ethnicity, a section of churches, another by vocation.. there’s just a ton of stuff in there, a bit too much if you ask me. We’re I king of the museum I might change it just a bit and tell more stories about the development of county, maybe profile a few pioneers, towns, who knows. They certainly have the artifacts there to do a lot of things.
The weather was fantastic. After a severe front blew through on Saturday afternoon the weather changed dramatically. We went from humid and warm to crisp almost fall like weather. Sleeping on Saturday night was outstanding, windows open wide, fresh breeze…
The Cabin is being rented out this week so through cleaning. I had some adding machine tape and had the girls write in their best handwriting “Sanitized for YOUR Protection.” I taped them around the toilet seats to give the place that “old time clean” feel.
Week ahead promises to be a bit trying. Mrs S is in California all week on Family business, the kids and I are keeping the home fire burning and starting to wrap up the summer to-d0 lists. Wednesday the semi annual brush with mortality. More to come.
Filed under Life
Summer Starts- NOW
If you’re keeping track, summer started for us Frozen Chosen last weekend. That’s when we went from the flaccid excuse for a spring that we usually get around here to full on oppressive summer. Which, for us, is anything above about 89 degrees. If you’re still with me, and you live in more southerly climes I heard what you mumbled and you’re right we are soft. But remember, come February, we’re gonna chat.
For Team Sank, this weekend is the annual “opening of the summer palace”. Like the Czar families of old, that would be the Rus Czars not the Drug/Health/Immigration/Etiquette Czars, we move the Sank Carnival out of the big city for the summer and into the hinterlands of Wisconsin, at least on weekends. I usually get a week vacation into, but this is officially a vacation free summer, no scheduled time off. Since most things in my life sort of “go dark” in the summer; school, Judaism, intellect, libido, lots of good reason to head north and tune out on weekends.
Tuning out this year will be a bit different thanks to the mobile hot spot I have built into my phone. For the first time I think I’ll be able to get internet access up there and will thus be able to finally put the last nail in the coffin of inter-personal communication with the family. No more outdated talking and interacting, we can go completely digital, which is good given my propensity to slur my speech and say stupid things like “I don’t see how it could hurt anything” or “’love it when a plan comes together” when I’m sitting around up there watching the lake and drinking beer.
Actually what’s really going to change up there is the blog. For the last 5 years or so Old and in the Way has been online, my dedicated reader(s) has been forced to endure long stretch of silence in this very space when I leave the grid for rural Polk County Wisconsin. NO MORE . I fully anticipate that I’ll be able to continue to write and report on the mundane things that are cracking me up, live from my Blake Lake Patio Office. What’s going to suffer is my weekly or more trips to J&S Coffee. This development sucks. Biggie. Imagine, giving up the lakeside beauty of a summer morning on the lake for an urban coffee shop. I didn’t see that coming either.
I’ve recently been noticing a disturbing drop off in the number of hits and comments I’ve been getting. I was blaming this on the recession, but turns out Americans are giving up needed medical procedures and latte’s before they give up on their high speed internet access. What about the countries slide to socialism? I see that a lot on the blogs, lots of people complaining that the United States is sliding down a slippery slope to a socialist pinko style of government where everyone will be taxed out of their wages and all behaviors will be controlled by the state. Local Congresswoman Michelle Backmann seem to like to remind of this at every opportunity. Not sure what that means since our current taxes for individuals and married couples are the lowest they’ve been since the 1950’s. I also haven’t seen anybrown shirted Fed types in my bushes with notepads and rule books.
I’ve settled in on oil spill. My readers are so worried about the oil spill in the gulf that they’ve not spent their time reading my blog. Most distressing if you ask me. Matter of fact this recent drop off has caused me to reconsider advertising on this space. I had a plan in place where I would sign up for Google Ad Sense and start raking in the bucks. My conservative estimates.. $50-$60 a month. Prorated out over a year of lost wages, that means the upgrade to my MacBook Pro is now not in the cards, which puts me, follow me here, into the injured class relative to the BP Spill.
I’ll be submitting my bill next week, hopefully I’ll have the new computer by the middle of June.
Filed under Life
