Surviving the Wilderness (Reading the Landscape)

I'm sure by now that everybody is wondering if we survived our weekend out in the wilderness or not. Well obviously we did. Or there is some scam artist typing this. Nope. Just the artist's loving, dutiful and understanding husband. It was very interesting and a tad bit chilly. The only heat in our log "cabin" was from a fireplace. Oh darn, I had to play with, I mean keep the fire going so we didn't have to wear our jackets indoors. That was a very tuff job for me. But some how I managed to keep the inside temp above 65. I used half of their firewood in the process, but they said I could use all I wanted, or was it needed. Who cares. All that matters is that I had fun, I mean that we stayed warm. As for the rest of our trip I'll let my lovely and talented wife tell the story.
Or mostly show & tell a little... Here's the back of our SUV loaded with half our house.
The log cabin overlooking Lightfoot Bay, our home for the weekend!
And inside is just as woodsy...

Joe's prize winning fire, by which we enjoyed our beer in mason jars. Without any distractions of TV, Internet, phones (by the way there was NO cell phone reception, either), or any other people, I ended up learning a little poker playing two nights in a row. Clearly neither of us has a poker face.

Joe pumping our air mattress, on which we sandwiched ourselves between two huge sleeping bags. Not too shabby... until we woke up in the morning against the hard wooden bed bottom.

Really, that was probably the closest we came to a real camping experience. Joe got to play with more fire in the morning to take the chill out of the cabin and cooked his usual weekend breakfast. The Saturday's program went great, with close to 20 people attending and creating artwork, thought there's no pictures to share.... In the evening we celebrated our adventure in the wilderness over our tiny Weber's grill.

We seriously thought Joe's grilled shrimp and beef might attract bears (we saw many evidences), but the only visitors we had were the cabin's long-time residence mice during the night. In the morning we woke up to tiny black droppings all over the kitchen stove and counter, including right inside our frying pan and in my tea cup!!! I'm sure they were quite relieved to be left alone in the quiet cabin after two days of my talking and squealing right to the invisible mice.

Today (Sunday) was a beautiful autumn day for a drive back home. We explored a couple of new rivers for fishing. Though neither of us felt any fish nor even saw a fish, we enjoyed simply being out in the nature. At one point, a huge eagle almost embraced us both as it flew right above the tree top over our head. What an experience! And after such adventure, it was very nice to be home indeed.