Today’s post is for all of those boat nerds out there. This collection of 15 photographs comprise the majority of nameable lake boats that I saw and photographed in the about a week’s time that I had at the cabin. All those boats that passed by, while I was without a camera (few), I muffed the shot and could not read its name or it was simply too dark to see a name, I’ll look for you next year. The title of this post is also a hat tip to David Mamet’s play and movie by the same title. I was going to include a link to a YouTube video of the movie, but Mammet’s language is too salty for the Great Lakes and this blog.

“The Marriage of Figaro” made for a late night. We didn’t get to bed until after midnight. I’ve never been a big fan of opera, but the Soo Theater Company’s production seemed quite professional and Mozart’s music was great. The Soo Theater itself, is still a reconstruction project in progress. There is new seating now, but the ceiling is still a mess. There is one more matinee production of Figaro, on Sunday.

Late nights make for late risings, on the morning after. Breakfast, packing and one last walk down the beach, equated to a noon launch. On the walk, we saw six vultures circling overhead. I’m sure they were just looking dying gulls and not us, right? Everyone grab a stick and form a circle facing outward.

We chose to fly down the backside of the front, skirting green, yellow and red blobs all the way down M127 to Jackson. By the time we turned east, the storms had moved on. Dinner at Anne and Bill’s was FABULOUS! Jane appeared too, we all had a good time. Tonight, we rest at Chez Harry’s, even if Harry is not here, his spirit persists.

Today, Friday, is our last full day at the cabin. Tomorrow, Saturday, we’ll begin wending our way back home to Saint Louis. Our first stop will be Ann Arbor, where we have an appointment for dinner at Anne and Bill’s. Sunday, we’ll continue on to the Lou by way of West Lafayette. Dave is already at Purdue; we’ll see him there and also exchange vehicles with him. We’ll miss Dan, who will be leaving STL the same day we arrive. He has one more week at Saugatuk left to go. Today wasn’t quite a perfect beach day, but it was pretty darn close. It threatened to rain a couple of times, but nothing really came of it. Tonight, Bubs and Harry and we are headed into the Soo for dinner and the opera, “The Marriage of Figaro”.Opera in the Soo? Go figure, haute culture.

Yesterday’s storms finally moved on. We walked the beach after dinner and saw Paulette. She was wrangling a spruce tree root, as grist for some future fiber arts project. She offered us some wine, which we accepted and sat with her and watched the sunset.

The storms must have knocked the friendly neighborhood Wi-Fi out at the Finlayson cabin. This event initiated a series of IT mishaps that that my eventual rebooting of the router only rectified. The time was that the cabin was where you went to get away from the world. Back in the day, when I was working at Chrysler, I never even left a phone number, when I went on vacation up to the cabin. There wasn’t even a phone at the cabin back then, with a number to leave. My boss at the time use to regale me with stories of calling out the state troopers, who could hunt down any man, but that, was just bluster. Then ole Al Gore had to go off and invent the Internet and now we even have Wi-Fi down at Doelle’s. Anyway, back to the future, after the wi-fi failed I tried to complete yesterday’s post via the iPhone. I saved over my almost completed post with a hopelessly outdated version. I ended up hauling the laptop down the beach to the Green Guy’s Cafe to complete the post. I was sitting in a beach chair, with a towel over my head and barely saw the bald eagle overfly me, when Paulette called it out. Just now, while writing this post, a diamond-shaped formation of nine jets overview the beach and I missed them, because I was typing this post on my iPhone, with my glasses off. Damn you, Al Gore!

In the morning, we saw Paulette again. Husband, Ray, had gone fishing yesterday and left the cleaned fish heads on the beach. The previous night, seagulls had feasted, but in the morning, Paulette reported that bald eagles were feeding on the catch. Bubs and Harry walked the beach in the morning. Along with Anne, they picked up, Paulette and Sophie. We ended up walking to Doelle’s. Along the way, Paulette, released Sophie and she swam down a gull. Paulette was mortified; she had expected the gull to just fly away. Lesson learned, by mid-August, all the immature gulls are dying.

It is getting late and it is time to pop this post. Fast forwarding through the rest of the day: meeting with Fran at Freighter View. We saw her walking around the lodge and by the time we had signed in, she had almost lapped us. In her room was an interlude with a strange woman, lost, thinking that this was their room. Cozy Inn and fish for dinner, this is how we bookended the most beautiful beach day that God has ever created.

Rain beating upon the porch roof, chainsaws whirling down the road, NPR in the background, these are the sounds of cabin living. Bubs and Harry went to town, leaving us to our own devices, on an otherwise quiet morning. Mergansers, easily a hundred of them, the Soo Locks Tour Boat making its regular Wednesday run and the occasional ore boat, these are the sights on this not quite yet a beach day. Anne and I lazily luxuriated the morning through, reveling in doing almost nothing, while the rest of the world revolves around itself. Lunchtime already? Where did the morning go? Sun’s out!

By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The photos are from yesterday. The customs boat was locking through when I took a tourist break from the Laundromat. With four 300 horsepower engines, radars and FLIRs the old adage was true, the size of the boy is reflected in the price of his toys. We finally made it down to the beach after dinner and had it all to ourselves. It was still hot and very sunny, even with only an hour to sundown. The fire ring down past Doelle’s was left standing up. It made for a nice picture frame. Speaking of Doelle’s, there is a Wi-Fi signal down there now. I thought that the wispy clouds and the sun dappled ripples in both the water and the sand made for nice pictures. Still warm, a full hour after dinner, I went for a dip that Anne captured.

Gitchy Goomy, gitchy gaddy
Sit you laddie down on your daddy’s knee
And ain’t it a nice place to be
Goggin noggin, papa’s rockin’
Like a mockin’ bird in a windy tree
And that ain’t no place for me
Been there one time, been there two times
Been there three times
More than I care to be
But we’re gonna make it through
Gitchy Goomy - Neil Diamond

The rain continues to linger well into the afternoon. This weather is beginning to make me smart from Jane’s chiding about valuing every single beach day. On the other hand, I could be out riding in this weather. The bananas were starting to go bad, so Anne decided to make banana bread. She had to “borrow” some flour from Fran’s cabin to make it, so we will likely go visit her and bring some of the bread to share. I went out to pick a few blueberries, but the rain curtailed that activity. I got just enough to spread as a veneer across the top of the loaf. I got the above quote from “The Song of Hiawatha” from Wiki. The article went on to explain that Longfellow manage to work into his poem many Ojibway words. For example, the word for blueberry is miin and plural, miinan for berries and miinagaawanzh for the bush upon which the berries grow.

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they called ‘Gitche Gumee’
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty.
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early.
- Gordon Lightfoot

I have no idea what Neil Diamond’s song, Gitchy Goomy, means, but I don’t think that it refers to Lake Superior. Then of course there is Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”, which you can hear on an endless loop if you ever visit the shipwreck museum on Whitefish Point, although he spells Gitchy Goomy the Canadian way.