Life on the farm

William and I went to visit my Mom tonight and while we were in the area, I wanted to head over to Fort Atkinson to check out the Band Concert that they hold on Wednesday nights. I kind of thought it would be cool, but it was REALLY something to see! I convinced William to go with me if I would buy him a malt from the Moo Mobile, so off we went. As we pulled up to the town it really didn’t look like there was too many people there, but I parked the car anyway and walked down the street. As I turned the corner, Holy Smokes! There were people in lawn chairs on one side of the street and others  just hanging out listening to the music. Now you have to remember that this is a little town of about 350 people and all the people there pretty much knew each other. As I was standing in line to get a Raspberry and a Chocolate malt, I found out that they have been having guests come and play on Wednesday nights since 1898. That’s 115 years! I kind of felt bad that I hadn’t come to this before. I also learned while I was in the ice cream line, that people from all over come to play with the band. Some of the people drive for over an hour just to get a chair on the portable band platform. And tonight, they even ran out of room, so they had to add extra seating for the musicians. When I asked where they get their music from, I was told that they play a little bit of everything from Patriotic music to Polka’s. They even had a Music Composer that liked to play with them write specific music only for this community band. Now just how cool is that?  And to top off the night, when I finally made it up to the malt window and ordered our two malts, I found out that they were 50 cents each.This was the last concert of the year, but I definitely want to come back again next year!

These past 5 days at the cabin was once again a great time. The weather on the other hand didn’t cooperate as well. Now it didn’t rain, but it was really windy and not weather that you’d go out on the lake for the afternoon and just hang out in your swimsuit. So of course we ate a lot, and laughed a lot, we played cards, and played some other games. We also did a couple of road trips to some local hang outs that we haven’t been to before. Check out the white sweatshirt in the picture below. It’s a picture of us four when we were at the cabin about 20 years ago!

But you know what? Even if the weather wasn’t the warmest, we still had a lot of fun. When we started out, were a little worried packing the Pacifica. And I even put the car topper on top of it to give us more room! But with a lot of luck and having all the spaces in the car filled (yes even by everyone’s feet) off we went. Our friends dog even fit in the car in the middle of two of us. Because the weather was chilly, every night we ended up making a fire in the cabin to heat it up before we went to bed. If you remember, there’s no electricity or running water in the cabin.

Our bathroom for the weekend

In the mornings when I would brush my teeth, I would take a small glass of water and my toothbrush loaded with toothpaste and head outside. One of the first days that we were there, I noticed that this one flower seemed to look a little different. And I was glad that I didn’t get too close! So even though the weather wasn’t warm enough to lay out in the lake, it was still warm enough to jump in the lake to get cleaned up and a fire after that felt good! Now some people just can’t believe that this is how we take a bath. But since this is the only cabin on the lake, and we only use biodegradable soap, you’re hair and skin feel just fantastic after you get out.

And Sunday came too soon and it was time to head back home. We always clean the cabin before we leave for home at the end of the weekend so the next group of people coming up have a nice clean cabin when they open the door. And as we were cleaning, I noticed that some of the pictures fell down off this one cork board. As I was organizing and putting them back up, one of the pictures just caught my eye. It was a picture of our friends Grandfather who built the cabin that we stay at. The picture shows him in front of a smaller hunting cabin that he built before he built the one we stay at now.Now granted the smaller cabin sure doesn’t look like it would have 8 double beds, 1 king bed, and four single beds in it like the one now, but I still really like the picture. I thought to myself as I was pinning it back up to where it belonged on the wall, if her Grandpa ever could have imagined how many lives he’s touched by building the bigger cabin. My friend pretty much grew up here in the summer months when she was a kid with her cousins, and my friends and I have been coming up right after high school graduation. You would catch us either laying on the lake on our air mattresses or sitting around the fireplace having in depth conversations about boys, then as the years went by… husbands, kids, and then probably work conversations. We’ve gone to each other’s weddings, kid’s weddings, and now some of those kids will be starting families soon.  So thinking about the Grandpa,  I don’t think he could have ever imagined when he built the cabin that a group of four girls for over 30 years can just spend a couple of days at the cabin that he built, doing pretty much nothing, and have the best time doing it!And as the gate gets closed for another year, it’s not the weather that’ll be the memory, but the weekend that you got to have with your friends just hanging out. That will be the memory that I’ll keep.

Yup, it’s that time of the year again. It’s the time when some of my girlfriends and I head up to the North country for a long weekend. Now I know that the title of this blog says ‘Gone Fishing’ and I think I should explain. We’ve only gone fishing maybe twice in over 30+ years since we’ve gone up north. But quite a long time ago we would get such grief from people that we would actually go up north without our husbands and kids, so we came up with a plan. We listened close to what some of the guys were saying when they went away for the weekends without their spouse’s,  and soon our story was to say that we were going fishing for the weekend. No one would believe that we would go hunting, but the fishing story was a good one.  I’m even thinking that we’d be doing most of the same stuff that the guys would be doing anyway on their ‘fishing’ trips. We get up late, eat a huge breakfast, go hang out on the lake for the day, and then eat some more. And during the course of the weekend, we might end up playing some cards. See, it’s that much different than the guy’s when they go off fishing. But there is one difference and  that is when we are on the lake, we are on our floaties and just hang out for the afternoon. I’m a little worried this year though. The weather turned a lot colder and I’m not sure that it’ll be warm enough to go in the lake. But I’m not going to freak out about it now, and I’ll guess we’ll see tomorrow when we get there if it’ll be warm enough. The cabin that we stay at is way up north in the National Forest and with no electricity or cell phone service, I’ll have to catch up with the blog when I get back on Sunday.

Until then – wish us luck on our ‘Fishing Trip’ 🙂