I have been up here at the cabin for over two months now. People have come and gone, but Anne and I have remained. Today, Dan is preparing leave. He and his friends sailed the boat over to the neighboring state park’s boat ramp and hauled the sailboat out of the water, from its all too short sailing season. I met them at the park, with the Prius and trailer. Back at the cabin Dan began the task of disassembling his boat, made all the much easier with the generous allowance of Anne and Bill’s garage for winter storage. Dan still had to find a home for all of the boats detached mast, spars and stuff. With the boat put away of for the season, the many labors of Hercules were not yet finished, not even by half. He still had to put away all of his other toys, his 40K models and the drone. All of his activity eventually sparked the beginning of a mass exodus, with everyone who is leaving tomorrow looking for and then packing all of their various things. The kids all leave tomorrow. All four of them are headed to Saint Louis, where Michael and Valerie live, Dan has more friends that he would like to visit with and Britt was able to score a cheaper flight back to NYC from. Their leaving, leaves us with our own set of chores, starting with laundry and then some much needed sweeping, eventually recycling, shopping and who knows what else. All of this effort is in preparation for the next and likely the final wave of occupancy here at the cabin for this summer.

Yesterday, we took the ferry to Sugar Island and visited the Bailey-Lagerstrom Nature Preserve, near the bottom of the island. This nature preserve is part of the Little Traverse Conservancy system. It features a kilometer long trail through a beaver swamp, at the end of which, we flushed a pair of Great Blue Herons from a dead tree. Before taking the ferry though, we fortified ourselves with a lunchtime visit to Clyde’s and bumped into Dan and his crew, who were just finishing up their own Clyde’s replenishment. After lunch, we lined up for the ferry and had to wait for the next one, before we could board. We got the half off senior citizen discount for our roundtrip fare. We had some difficulty locating the preserve, because its signage was less than spectacular. Eventually, we found it though. There was a guy there, who didn’t want to get parked in by us. He spoke with us and at first seemed a little bit creepy, but in the end was mostly harmless. On the way back, we just missed the ferry, but then caught the next one. All-in-all it was a good visit.