And the next day we went to the lake. This is the kind of lake whose beaches disappear when the water’s high, which it was, and the kind of lake the brothers grew up on. Bassmaster patiently hooked up the boat and…
drove us all out there while
Miss J amused herself by coloring in pictures I drew for her (in this case, Spike, if the brilliant artwork doesn’t show that) and
discovering my omnipresent fan, which was a new technology for her. She did pretty well opening and closing it… and opening and closing… and opening and closing… and… yeah. 😉
All the teeny beaches were filled with people so we had a fairly lengthy trip around the water looking for a possible space with some shade. This bull snake (still looks like a rat snake to me, but Bassmaster’s the expert and he said bull snake) was on his way to land and swimming strongly, despite being more than halfway across the lake and presumably coming from the other side. Pretty boy. Or girl; who can tell?
Eventually we found a spot and unloaded, at which point it was obviously time for
FOOD! That had to come before Chilkat and Chilkoot could discover the water.
Miss J was an old hand at it, having spent most of her summer weekends at the lake (as did her dad and his brothers throughout their growing-up years).
The spot I found that had some shade turned out to be a cottonwood tree stuffed with the fluffy seeds that give it its name, and which give both KrisDi and me Great and Amazing Sneezes. So I moved.
Chilkat wasted no time in starting to build Sand Things, even though her brother
didn’t seem all that sure about this whole “uncontained water” business. It wasn’t long, though, before
he and his sister both
were enjoying the patoots out of cool water on a hot, hot day (it hit 100° or better).
Meanwhile, Bassmaster gave Miss J a bit of a swimming lesson.
Those kids were utterly exhausted on the way home and despite struggling not to nod off, I think most of them did. They needed it!
