Canoeing

You can guess what's going on here



I'm trying my hand at collecting firewood.



Tonight we left the brouhaha at the house and went canoeing. It was so beautiful and peaceful. Nights like tonight are what I've been waiting on for several months. We parked the truck and the car close to the road and put the canoe in. The water was so calm and the sun was shining. After awhile we stopped paddling and ate our sandwiches. Then we found a place to get out so I could practice starting a fire. We sat by our little fire and I felt very content. We didn't see any "exciting" animals although we did find moose poop where we stopped, which was an exciting event for the males in my family. We also saw a loon and beaver houses. As we were heading back, though, we heard something like I have not heard before. I am at a loss to describe how it sounded. Kendall says it was an "eerily cacophonous melody, curl-your-eyebrows, fear-inducing." He also described it as "a dozen babies crying" and "chainsaws." If it was babies crying, I picture grown men dressed in diapers crying loudly. It echoed through the... again, I'm at a loss for words so Kendall fills in for me..."through the boreal forest of the Canadian shield." (You can see why I'm the blogger here.) Anyway, I have never heard anything like this. It was creepy! I looked back at Kendall and he just mouthed, "Wolves." He hasn't yet admitted it, but I think he was freaked out too. I quietly said back to him, "I am NEVER going camping." The boys were oblivious to our quiet conversation. When the cacophony stopped, Eli simply said, "That was nice." Thankfully, he never really asked what it was. I don't know... This may take some time for me to get over... I think we'll try a campground for our first time out.

But it was still a gorgeous evening in spite of the ravenous wolves. When we made it back to where we parked the cars the mosquitoes were horrible. We quickly stashed the boys in the vehicles and loaded the 80 lb canoe onto Kendall's truck. I got into the car and waited for Kendall to pull out. He drove through a puddle that turned out to be especially deep. And got stuck. That canoe turned out to be just a little bit too much for the Blue Weasel. Kendall and I were both laughing and I even got out the video camera and recorded the event from the safety of the car. Kendall, who has a love-hate relationship with his truck, got out a shovel and before starting with the digging, gave the Blue Weasel a swift whack on the nose. He dug for awhile and laughed. Finally, he gave up and told me to pull the car up to try to tow him. He pulled out the tow strap that he wisely keeps in the truck at all times. At that very moment, what should pull off the road, but a very rugged-looking orange Hummer. They had pulled in just to turn around and it looked like they saw our predicament and were trying to quick get out of there before being roped into anything. However, my equally rugged husband flagged them down. They kindly pulled out the Weasel in no time flat. And we happily proceeded with our journey home.