Family resemblance

Most of us would agree that Kaiden really looks like his daddy . . . until I pull out Alyssa's baby pictures.  What do you think?

Madi

Last week I had the pleasure of keeping Miss Madi for the day.  Madi's mother, Lori, is a teacher at the elementary school where I was principal.  I've watched Madi's older sisters, Meaghan and Jaelynn, grow from babies into beautiful young ladies and hope to do the same with Madi.  I've been using Madi to practice learning how to take better photographs so Lori brought Madi some "dress up" clothes for us to take some pictures.  Here are some pictures from our day together.

  Madi has taken an early interest in reading - She would not look up from the book to have her picture taken.  We also had a great time talking and laughing.

Okay, fellow bloggers, you may wonder how I got these pictures posted like this.  Check out MckMama's blog (my charming kids) which is linked at the right.  After you get to her blog, click on the photography button, then photography lessons, then side by side photo layout.  Obviously I still need to practice a little more but it is nice to have a little more control over pictures posted in a blog.  Warning - you need Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to do this.

Canada Fishing Trip - Part 3 - finally fishing

Rainy Lake is about 285,000 acres so there was lots of places to fish!  But it's easy to get lost on a lake you are not familiar with - so our first day of fishing was not too far from Camp Ontario.  We had a 16 foot Lowe boat with a 25 horsepower motor.  Sandy had fixed up some chairs with backs on clamp on bases so we wouldn't be just sitting on benches.  Thank goodness for that because we spent many hours in that little boat that week!  Here's a picture of our boat.

The weather on our first day (Saturday) there was cloudy and dreary.  I was so exhausted from our trip there that I chose to just sit and watch Sandy fish.  I also was a little afraid of taking my brand new Canon camera so these pictures are not the greatest!  Even though it was cloudy the lake was like glass!

 

We fished around this little island which was visible from Camp Ontario.

Sandy casting his first cast.

A pelican we saw -

The first catch

 

The day's catch which we had for supper.

We thought these were pretty good sized fish but Robert told Sandy that these were a little smaller than he usually keeps.  But they sure did make for a good dinner!  Here's Sandy cooking them.
 

 

 

Canada Fishing Trip -part 2 - getting to Camp Ontario

Our third night out was spent in International Falls, Minnesota so we could get our groceries and get to Camp Ontario on Saturday morning.  We hadn't made motel reservations and ended up in an older motel in a room with three double beds.  It seems that International Falls is a hopping place on Friday nights - lots of people stay there so they can cross into Canada for their fishing trip on Saturday.  We talked with Robert and Janet at Camp Ontario and got directions to where we were to meet them.  We got up fairly early on Saturday morning and went to the grocery store to get our supplies for the week.  We had discussed what we would have each evening but it still took us some time to buy the groceries.  We loaded them up into the two big coolers in the back of the pickup and took off for the border crossing. Here's what we saw - and it was still another mile or more to the Canadian border!

Hopefully you can read the message on the side of this building!

We could not believe the number of boats crossing into Canada and then once across how many were going back to the US.  The line to get back across into the US was as long if not longer than the line going into Canada.  Obviously fishing is a large attraction for this part of Canada.


It took almost an hour to get to the border crossing into Canada.  Neither one of us had been across the border to Canada but we had our passports ready.  The Canadian patrolman asked where we going and a few other questions.  More than once he asked if we had any alcohol or tobacco to declare and we didn't but I guess he didn't believe us.  He handed Sandy a small piece of paper and told us to pull into a bay on the left so they could search our vehicle.  It wasn't really bad but it definitely was a little unnerving.  We were asked to get out of the pickup and set on a bench next to it.   About five or six agents looked through things in the cab and back of the pickup.  We had packed our clothes in large plastic containers and sealed them with duct tape and they opened those and rifled through them.  They also went through our groceries and looked at Sandy's fishing tackle.  After about 15 minutes they sent us on our way.  We made a stop at a Wal-M@rt in Fort Frances looking for potatoes but they didn't have any there.  It was definitely not like the Wal-M@rt at home.  We did find a small grocery store and to our potatoes.  After taking a wrong turn, we finally got on the right road and made it to Wilderness Outfitters dock where we were to meet Robert.  Because of all the delays we had missed Robert and it would be about 45 minutes before he returned.  Here are some pictures taken while we waited.

 

By the time Robert returned we had all our stuff unloaded from the pickup and waiting on him on the dock.  This is where we parked the pickup for the week.

It was pretty cool and lightly raining on the boat trip to camp and I sat huddled up and really didn't watch where we were going.  It was about a 20-25 minute ride.  Once we were there Janet gave us the choice of two different two bedroom cabins.  Out of the six cabins two others were occupied.  One was a couple of guys from Tyler, Texas (which is where Robert and Janet live during the rest of the year) and the other with a couple and their brother.  It was a very light week for Camp Ontario.  Here's some pictures of our cabin.  

Our bedroom 

 The outhouse - view from our bedroom window

T

 The extra bedroom - which we used as our "closet"

The front porch aka Sandy's fishing tackle storage

As you can see it was pretty rustic!  Robert and Janet had running water at their house and we were able to fill our "running water jug" from their outdoor spigot. We brought drinking water with us.  The outhouse was behind the cabin - just a short walk and yes, I did go to the outhouse during the night a couple of times.

Canada Fishing Trip -part 1- The trip up to Minnesota

This year was the big 6-0 birthday for Sandy and he has always wanted to go to Canada fishing so I arranged a trip to Camp Ontario on Rainy Lake in Ontario, Canada. I jokingly called it our "week on the island" because Camp Ontario is on a 25 acre island. I'm guessing that this small camp was started somewhere in the middle part of the last century. There are six cabins plus a house for the couple who own it. There is no running water in the cabins but each one has its own outhouse! The refrigerator, stove and lamps in each cabin are butane powered so it wasn't totally camping out. Improvements have been made over the years including the addition of a community shower room. The owners, Robert and Janet, have running water at their house and a generator so they have electricity. (In fact after we got there, I found out they have satellite Internet service so I was able to have a connection with the rest of the world and not have withdrawal pains!)

Rainy Lake is a 225,000 acre lake along the northeastern edge of Minnesota and on into Ontario, Canada. We spent 2.5 days driving the 1400 miles to International Falls, Minnesota. Most of our trip was on I-35 through Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota. It was the first time in Iowa and Minnesota for both of us and we enjoyed seeing new country. We took a little detour near Excelsior Springs, Missouri to visit the birthplace of Jesse James. It didn't look very interesting after we arrived and the admission price was $7.50 per person so we decided not to go in the small house/museum. We had passed several signs on our way to the museum saying there was a "huge sale" so we decided we'd drive by. The "huge sale" was a garage sale with about 4 tables of stuff outside and one large table inside the garage. But we stopped anyway just to stretch our legs.

We got to visiting with a couple there and they recommended we visit Watkins Mill which was just down the road a few miles from Jesse James' birthplace. It turns out that Watkins Mill is located in a state park and it was a beautiful park to drive through. Watkins Mill was the last fully equipped 19th century woolen mill in the United States.  The grounds were beautiful - here's some pics!  (These are the first pictures I took with my new Canon T1i so I have LOTS of pics!)

The path from the visitor's center to the mill.

The mill

 

Sandy peeking in the window!

We saw lots of beautiful country but didn't stop much to take pictures.  Here are some from a rest area in Minnesota.  Since we live in an area with very few trees, I am always in awe of places with lots of trees and vegetation.

 

We went slightly out of the way just so we could catch a view of Lake Superior in Duluth.  There was another rest area with an awesome view.

Disclaimer - I wrote this post two months ago but have tried numerous times to load pictures and Blogger hasn't cooperated.  My plan is to do three more posts about our trip but it make take me several weeks to do!