Summer Company


Summer Company
By Allan Olson
I guess it’s a good thing that I have a hard time being idle – as this weekend there wasn’t much opportunity to do any “idleness.”
I already had a weekend of things planned when late in the weekend I had a call from my cousin – checking to see if we wanted some company – I discussed the plans with my wife – as any smart husband would do and returned the phone call letting him know that they are welcome to come down.
Thankfully – they didn’t plan on being at my house too early on Friday as they had a few stops to make – like the extra stops I make traveling places – finding geocaches. Friday was busy at work as I was on the go from the morning till evening finally leaving town sometime after 6:30 p.m. – to my surprise our guests still didn’t beat me home. I had enough time to shed the work clothes before company arrived.
Their two kids announced the presence quickly by coming in the house and within seconds it was a mix of noise and chaos as the cousins started to mingle loudly together as is always expected.
It wasn’t long and us adults were chatting –probably loudly as well and then we began the process of making homemade pizza for supper. The food was great the beverages tasted good after a long week and the visiting was fun. My cousin and I played 10,000 dice while the ladies sat elsewhere and visited. The hours kept ticking by and soon it was well after midnight before we retired for the evening.
The next day was another busy day – I had plans for the lake with another person preparing just a few more caches to hide for the August event to be held in Cass Lake and my cousin and family prepared to hit the bike trail in Bemidji for geocaching. In the end he took Marcus and left his daughter at our house – which worked great for the boys and the girls. I borrowed a boat from Break on the Lake Resort and three of us – Nikolai and our caching partner Allan Habedank took off for Cedar Island.
This was my first time navigating the lake by myself in a boat that I wasn’t completely familiar with using. Okay truthfully – I wasn’t familiar with it at all, but thankfully it wasn’t very complicated and we soon set our sights for the island. We beached the boat –carefully to avoid any damage and to avoid getting wet and our first stop was for a geocache on the island that I had yet to find. With that completed we set out in navigating the island – well we found out there isn’t much to navigate. For those that aren’t familiar with Cedar – they thrive in swampy conditions and we found a fair amount of swampy conditions on the island, in the end we placed five additional caches at various intervals across the island. For our return trip back to the boat we decided to just get wet – so we pulled off our shoes and hiked in the water. Once back at the resort we checked in with the dock boy and headed for home and dry clothing.
My cousin arrived about an hour later and I set to cooking food on my grill hotdogs and brats was the evening meal plan.  Soon the ice fell in the cup as did more beverages, we visited for quite some time before my cousin and I decided some more games of dice were in order again. I once again lost far more games than I won – but it was still fun anyway. The evening ended somewhere around 1 a.m. before we headed to bed.
On Sunday – nobody moved much before 9 a.m. – we finally started preparing breakfast and soon people were waking up. After breakfast – we went to our secret swimming hole where we enjoyed the nice cool and clear water for over two hours.
Our company departed shortly after our return for swimming, I settled in for a quick nap before bringing the kids to Ferris Park for baseball again. The evening ended slightly earlier than the previous two but I was still up late working.
This week’s plan will be traveling to a new state for the kids.
I hope everyone enjoys their summer vacation and is able to spend some time on the lake and in the woods. Thanks to everyone for reading, and as always, please be safe while enjoying your favorite outdoor recreational activity and on the lakes. Remember to take pictures to preserve a lifetime of memories. Thanks for reading, and have a great week!




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