A Wintery Mix


 A Wintery Mix
In keeping with my New Year’s resolution to do more fishing, we did some fishing last Friday afternoon. The wintery mix of weather that provided a gorgeous 50 degree day on January 10 soon showed its true colors when the skies began to dump rain on us. By morning the back roads were a frozen mess; school was delayed and then cancelled for most area schools.
A little past 9 a.m. I decided that it was time to finish packing the van and load the kids and Bob the dog and hit the road – so we did. We covered the first 20 miles very slowly and carefully, until we reached the main highway. After looking at the passing traffic, we quickly realized that it was going to be a good ride north.
The highway departments (county and state) must have been working hard Thursday night into Friday morning, as both Highways 71 and 72 were in prime driving condition. I set the cruise at 60 and headed toward the lake. After a short detour to pick up two nieces and a nephew, we headed to the lake and were driving on hard water before long. Looking at a map from the resort, we saw that our destination was over seven miles out on the frozen lake.
We took a leisure cruise out onto the lake, and finally arrived at the 12-hole fish house were my wife, and her mom and sister had been angling since early that morning. We spent less than three hours in the house, but it felt like it was all day. The fish weren’t biting, the kids were restless (and admittedly, so was I), and one niece had to get to work. So we all loaded back into the van and headed back toward shore – it seemed to take forever. Every large bump we hit on the ice, all I could think was, “My poor van! First I smack a deer, and now I’m trying to destroy it on the ice!” Then my battery light came on. In my head, I knew it was only all the water splashing up inside the engine, but paranoia started to set in – a fear that something would go wrong with the alternator on the ice. All proved to be fine, though, and 30 minutes later we rolled safely off the ice. Whew!
The best part of the fishing trip was that none of the kids managed to get their feet into an ice hole. Even so, the water was high enough on the lake that their boots still managed to get still wet.
That evening, we enjoyed a dinner of fish and hash browns before going on the road again for a 20-mile drive to my parents’ place for the evening. The only problem was that the closer we got, the worse the roads were. It was a slow drive in the dark. My job was to keep the vehicle between the ditches and away from the few other drivers crazy enough to be out on the road in those conditions. My wife’s job was to make sure I wasn’t getting too close to the ditches. With her navigation aid and some divine guidance, we made it safely to our destination.
The next morning we woke up and the storm was over, aside from a strong wind out of the northwest and the accompanying cold temperatures. Of course, the county gravel roads weren’t plowed yet. We decided that we wanted to get home on Saturday in case another storm blew in and really snowed us in, so about 24 hours after we arrived in that neck of the woods, we packed up and headed back for home. The drive took us over three hours from start to finish (about an hour longer), but we arrived safely and enjoyed all the comforts of our home the rest of the weekend.
A new/used cabinet for dishes arrived on Sunday, and with the help of my brother and the previous owner, it was brought into the house and set in place. The kids derived some measure of pleasure in helping take all the dishes out of the old one and putting them in the new one on Sunday.
Our van survived the trip onto the ice and the slow ride through the storm to home, and on Sunday went to its new home (i.e., body shop) for at least this week to get fixed up as good as new.
Remember to watch out for school buses on the roads; they are carrying a precious cargo – our children. Also please exercise caution when venturing out on the lakes. Thanks for reading, and have a great and safe weekend. For more of my columns visit: http://allan-crazykids.blogspot.com/.


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