We’re supposed to get rain today. We had a spritz overnight, but hardly any of the pavement got wet. “Heavy and torrential downpours at times.” PLEASE! When Don starts talking about how dry it has been and how sick of it he is, you know it’s bad.
It’s Monday and Don has left the house to report for jury duty. He may get sent back home today. It’s a little different than the last time I was called. He goes in today. If he’s sent back home, he goes in again tomorrow morning. I think he’d like to serve, so I’m hoping he gets on a trial.
Imogen in her new back-to-school shoes. Well, not just hers. As you know, the girls share clothes and shoes. Sometimes that involves a scuffle, but, for the most part, they’re pretty good about it.
Aren’t they wonderful? Look at the detail! Another pair from Cora Huang, who lives ‘next door’ to me in Connecticut.
I have no idea how any of the Blythe cobblers do such small and detailed work. Shoes are one of my favorite Blythe things. They’re also one of my favorite human things.
No coaching on the schedule today. I’ll work at least one day with Jane Eyre before I drive to Rochester on Saturday. And another with Jim. I’m just not sure when those days will be.
I’m awaiting the next installment of the Slough House series by Mick Herron. I finished London Rules, and was going to hold off before I ordered the next book. But I’m so addicted, I have to keep going. The next is Joe Country.
More on the Great Lakes – I took a trip with my grandparents when I was about 9, part of which consisted of driving north through the Lower Peninsula to the Upper Peninsula to Sault Ste. Marie, where we crossed into Canada, and proceeded to drive all the way around Lake Superior. Years later, we camped on the shores of Lake Superior and I swam in that famously cold lake. I’ve been to Lake Michigan several times – in Michigan and in Illinois. I’ve sailed on Lake Erie with my father – he kept his sailboat docked at a marina there. When my dad and mom retired, they sold our home and moved north to Rogers City, which is on the shores of Lake Huron. (They loved it there. So did I.) and I’ve been to Lake Ontario several times. And Niagara Falls, of course!
I won’t have time to do much of anything other than work this weekend. But I will sneak in a little visit to Lake Ontario before I head back home on Sunday.
Stay safe.
Happy Monday.
I hope you have time to explore the Finger Lakes area too. It’s so beautiful.
No time to explore anything other than a bit of Rochester. I’m working on two shows now and have very little free time. But I’ve been to the Finger Lakes area and it is lovely.
Stay safe, Linda
hope you get rain … more than a sprinkle. and that don gets selected for jury duty. and you get that next book soon.
love the mix of patterns in imogen’s outfit. and those shoes are darling, too.
i have a few travel goals in this life: get to all fifty states, go to the farthest places north, east, south and west of america, go to the north and south poles …. getting on all the great lakes is another one. been to lake michigan a few times for it being the closest of the great lakes to me. my favorite will always be lake superior. members of my family and i rented a sailboat three years ago and enjoyed wonderful time on all that water (felt like the ocean … might as well been for as huge as that lake is). two cousins own a cabin their parents bought long ago on a small lake northwest of duluth … many happy memories of times spent there with my family. love it, love them!
thanks for sharing your lake memories, claudia … that brought up so many for me. :)
hope you all have a nice day and stay safe.
kathy
Lake Superior is huge and dangerous and beautiful.
Stay safe, Kathy.
Imogen does look like she is ready for fall. I can’t imagine how they make those shoes, but they are so cute.
I hope Don gets on a jury if that is what he wants. I have been on several and I’m happy that I’m now 70 and I can opt out. Too much stress for me.
All of the Great Lakes are amazing. I don’t think people really comprehend the size until they see them in person. And they don’t understand how dangerous they can be either. There have been 33 drownings in Lake Michigan so far this year. There are hundreds of ship wrecks in the lakes too.
Take care
I just looked it up. Actually there are over 6,000 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes with an estimated loss of 30,000 lives.
xo
Lake Superior is especially dangerous.
I’ve found that people who’ve never seen them have no concept of their size. Even Don doesn’t quite get it.
Stay safe, Marilyn.
I’m now humming The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
One of my favorites!
xo
Oh the shoes! And it poured here last night! Went outside and just took it all in. At least I don’t have to water today. Just wondering if you have ever been to Mackinac Island? Pure heaven! We went there on a family vacation when I was 13 and I still have the best memories from that trip. We stayed at the Chippewa. My first time riding horses which I loved. Mine kept turning around and wanting to go back to the stable! We also took a bike ride around the whole island. I want to go back there with Bill because he has never been there. On our to do list. Really appreciate all the input about my “procedure”.
I should find out today when it is scheduled for. Take care and hope for rain!
It’s lovely there.
Let us know when you find out the date of your surgery, Deb.
Stay safe.
I love hearing your (and everybody else’s on the blog) Great Lakes experiences; what a lovely bunch of memories; and it would be true; that, for somebody like me on the West Coast and ocean-beach oriented, there’s no way I can really have any concept of a huge freshwater lake, so it’s interesting to hear the comments about it.
As for me, don’t ask me how this even happened (random and spontaneous), but I wound up spending time walking around the boatyard at the marina today. I’ve never done this before. What perked up my curiosity was a chorus of harbor seals barking their heads off (eight of them, resting on the curbs of some empty boat slips), one of them (a big, big guy) sounding awfully hoarse. But then I kept walking and wound up at a huge hoist (smaller of the hoists; another gigantic one there can lift 22 tons) where a sailboat was getting cranked up out of the water to dry dock (a very efficient effort!); talked to the owner; all the barnacles had been scraped off but now the boat was to be washed and painted. (Cannot imagine what this must cost!)
I noticed another of (many) boats out of the water getting worked on (I was dwarfed by these vessels!) and there was what surely was a vintage ‘wooden’ sailboat which caught my eye. This pair of guys who graciously answered my questions (wiry and sunburned ‘old salts’ [sailors] who knew their boats!!) said it was about to undergo some major restoration. You could see the heavy-varnished, golden wood was in a deteriorated condition. It reminded me of a sailboat that was in that movie, The Way We Were (time period would have been 1950s, I think early in the decade; I’m guessing). I said, “I wonder if that’s the type of boat David Crosby used to have in Santa Barbara (musician of Crosby, Stills & Nash and the Byrds)?” They said, “Yeah, we know that boat very well (I think the boating community must be pretty tight up and down the Southern Calif coast; a close-knit group); Crosby sold it a few years back; it’s up north now in Santa Cruz; it’s called the Mayan.” So, when I got home, I looked it up, and his wooden sailboat was built in 1947.
I didn’t realize that this marina section (which the tourists don’t much see; you have to be careful; it’s a bit of a hazard zone with so much going on) is such a ‘real’ working harbor, with very-large fishing boats which look like the ones in that movie, The Perfect Storm. (I keep quoting movies, so art imitating life? Of course The Perfect Storm was based on a tragic, real-life happening at sea. I had read the book, too.) But huge piles of heavy black nets with big round/oval yellow floats that they appear to lay out on the docks and I guess clean and ‘repackage’ for the next trip out. I didn’t get to ask any questions; the workers were all too busy. I was just in observation mode.
But a re-fueling station and also a rather massive mechanics building, too; I guess boats are always being worked on for something, to obviously make sure they’re sea-worthy and operating properly. I also came across three people (my age group; retirees?) who had a big, big sailboat-sail all flattened out on a grassy patch which they were carefully folding, fold after fold after fold, almost as if you were folding up an American flag. I asked if I could touch it and it wasn’t really canvas per se; rather some sort of mylar. The sail was damaged and they were folding it to take it somewhere for repair.
Was a super-interesting day for me and I got in a good walk in safe places where I didn’t have to wear a mask; was a little muggy outside but overcast with no searing sun on my head. (We’d earlier seen a good-sized flock of pelicans with their long “beaks” flying low over the sea in another location [an empty beach]; they came from so far away that we almost couldn’t see them, but kept flying north to who-knows-where, no landing.) My husband and I are ‘playing’ a bit too much on these hot summer days of August and know we need to work on home projects three times as hard come cooler weather; but, in the meantime, just like so many of you enjoying the lakes, I’m taking advantage of my Pacific Ocean. The beaches will be crazy-busy come Labor Day; but, today, in contrast to this past weekend, much less-crowded at the shore; and it’s nice to talk occasionally to other people outdoors, distanced and safe with Covid virus still in our midst, whereas I particularly-personally have been so ‘shut down’ since early 2020 in the epidemic due to my immune system compromise. You get out like this, and it makes you feel like you have ‘a life’ again.
I don’t think much about shorebirds because I’ve been around them all my life; I guess I somewhat take them for granted although what would the beach be without the beach birds?!
I do love the little ones who grub around on the wet sand, then hurry out of the foamy water as if to not further get their little toesies too drenched. Of course seagulls, to me, are quirky yet beautiful. But pelicans? Nothing I’ve ever much thought about til I watched this flock of them today; fascinating. (The only place I ever really see them otherwise is when multitudes of them stand on the jetties; don’t know if this is true, but I’ve heard the fishing boats coming back in from open sea actually clean their catch and throw out the entrails for the waiting birds who know the boats will be coming back into the harbor [so don’t call them a bird brain; they’ve got this all schemed out!].)
So, I had to look ’em up: Pelicans are apparently quite the fliers; big wings. They glide and then flap those wings over the water in wherever their journey takes them. San Diego Zoo says: ‘Getting UP in the air can be challenging without the help of the wind. Pelicans must run over the water while beating their big wings and pounding the surface of the water with both feet in unison to get enough speed for takeoff.’ And then I’ve just now read that they can fly up to 100 miles in one journey, so I’m wondering if that’s what we watched today. They must have been destined for some favorite feeding area, south to north along the coastline. And some people term that kind of group-flight a pelican ‘squad’.
Who knew. There’s a lot to learn of in this world around us!
So nice to have a little adventure, Vicki! Good for you!
Stay safe.
Vicki, you’ve taken me back to a time in my life that was like no other—when we lived the sailors’ life. Over two years of mid-ocean sail repairs, engine repairs, rigging repairs, storms, and fair weather, and strange exotic places. Boat yards were a busy, happy place, too. Living that life was the best of times and the worst of times and it changed me forever. Birds and dolphins and seals and whales…oh my! Thank you.
Shanna, you lived on a sailboat? How exciting! What far-flung destinations?
There was not a soul I said ‘hi’ to yesterday at the boatyard who wasn’t patient, nice and good-humored; working hard yet relaxed (how can you be both, but they were!). They all seem to know what’s going on with each other. I absolutely LOVED the vibe, the sights, the sounds, the smells. (And, get this: I can’t swim; I don’t eat fish. But I do love the sea.)
I was on a bareboating vacation in the British Virgin Islands (Caribbean/West Indies) for a month once, a long-long time ago. Went at the wrong time of year (October) and we lost our anchorage in a rather violent storm. Had another occasion when a moored boat drifted right into us, such that I awoke to a big BANG because I was sleeping in the bow and that’s where we got hit.
Did you ever have any fears of piracy? We were continually warned about it at the time although some of my fellow passengers preferred to sleep outside because it was hot and humid in the hurricane holes at that time of year. (I think the only time we felt cool was when we caught the trade wind on the open water.) Anyway, the warning was if you left the boat, lock everything up; always have a buddy on the boat. I got a little creeped out one time when I was the only one on deck for a few hours, as everybody else was diving and snorkeling, away from the boat and me.
I was on a 46-ft sailboat with that trip, and I learned how to do a few things; I could get myself to dry land with the dinghy; I could work the Evinrude and motor my way to a beach as long as it wasn’t a rocky one (was a kinda working vacay; but enough to educate myself about tacking and some other stuff so that when I lived in Santa Barbara five years later, I’d go out with boats on Friday evenings after work if anybody needed a hand and could take on one or two of us just wanting a nice sail to end the week).
Were you a ‘sailor’ for quite a while before you ever tackled being ‘out there’ permanently and on your own as live-aboards and intrepid travelers? (I think I got the bug for this after I saw the [1970s] movie “The Dove” [and had read the book] by a young guy featured in a few issues of National Geographic; his name was Robin Lee Graham and he was sailing around the world all-by-himself when he was a teen. I remember it as a big deal because when he finished his journeys, he sailed into Los Angeles, and a lot of us kids/young people in Southern Calif had heard a lot about him. The actor who played him in the movie was a Bottoms brother; the actors Bottoms’ [they’re probably all mostly my age now; in the retirement years; Timothy Bottoms was probably the best known {The Last Picture Show film}]; I have to think but maybe it was Joseph Bottoms in The Dove movie; the Bottoms’ good-sized family are all pretty well known in Santa Barbara where I used to live. The patriarch/dad was also an actor but was big in the local art world as a sculptor; he just died maybe 3-4 years ago. I always think of him when I see the dolphin sculpture of his at the wharf in Santa Barbara; is so beautiful.)
Vicki, you would have been a far more intrepid sailor than I was. I don’t swim, either, hate camping and being outdoors in general, but my Mr. Wizard did and loved all of those things and it was his dream—how could I say no? ( Though I heard stories of many a wife who did!)
This was the nineties and ours was a 36-foot 1970s sloop and just right for a crew of two plus a fox terrier. An incredibly seaworthy craft. We had plenty of weather, pirate fears, equipment failures and coastguard boardings, crooked port authorities—all the adventure I could handle and way too many emergencies to remember. In all, we sailed over 18,000 miles of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Caribbean, plus up the intracoastal waterway from Fl to NY.
We left San Francisco and visited many ports along the way, Santa Barbara being one of our favorites. We sailed from one end of Mexico to the other, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Caymen Islands and both coasts of Florida, then north to visit our son in NYC. We spent the winter in Baltimore.
Next spring we sailed for the Bahamas, then back through Panama to head home, by way of Galapagos, NukuHiva, and Hawaii—lots of time on the open ocean where we went weeks without seeing another living soul except the sea creatures. Boy, were we homesick!
Now back on dry land and with the knowledge that we did survive, I can appreciate what an adventure it was and I wouldn’t trade the experience for the world. Neither would I ever try it again!
No, we didn’t have tons of experience. A Hobie Cat and a couple of Caribbean bare-boat trips with friends was pretty much it. Mr. Wizard can fix anything and had done lots of research, so we had faith, but experience, not so much. Not much technology back then, either. But our prehistoric GPS did save us, I think. Don’t know how I survived all of those night watches and being the only one awake to manage the sailing.
Thanks for a trip down memory lane—one that I usually push way to the back of my brain!
Oh, what a cutie she is in those shoes and socks! Don’t you just love it?!
I missed the beginning of the great lake saga, I think, as I’m reading backwards and trying to catch up. I’ve been to all five but swimming in none of them. Or maybe Lake Michigan at some point in my childhood but not my memory.
I’ve never read the Mick Herron books. I might have to add them to the list.
You’d love those books, Jeanie.
Stay safe!