Sunday, July 1, 2018

Holiday Road


Presently, I am sitting on a cushioned wicker chair, surrounded by wilderness (technically, I am enclosed in a screen porch which protects my frail body from insects.) My computer display tells me something I have never seen: Not connected—No connections are available. It’s beautiful.

This vacation started five days ago during a downpour—with Lindsay Buckingham’s Holiday Road playing over my speaker and the girls humming along—with a long drive from home to the Cut Foot Sioux Resort in northern Minnesota. It was four days of fun, fishing, swimming, and relaxing with my favorite ladies. As some of you may have read, I celebrated my four-year sobriety anniversary on this trip, although I was bordered by normal people enjoying normal-people beverages for the entirety of that day. Stuff like that doesn’t bother me much anymore. The only thing I really think is, it must be nice to be normal. I will celebrate my achievement with my fellows when I get back; I’m in no danger.


 
Fishing. I don’t really care for water, much less the swimmers who inhabit it. I haven’t been fishing legally in years, and I probably haven’t enjoyed it since childhood, but I made the best of the situation this (week)end (foodservice people vacation on weekdays) and caught a few keepers, and even fileted a couple northern. The “Y” bones are tricky, and fish flop around a lot, and I plan to never kill a fish again. I also caught some decent sized walleye but had to throw them back because of the size restrictions imposed by the MN D.N.R. Here’s a picture of me trying to hold a fish which is my hugest pet-peeve on Facebook.
 
Apparently, that is not how you hold a fish. Immediately after this picture, the fish flopped, and I dropped it and it was stupid and I didn’t like getting it back into the water. Lesson learned: I still hate fishing. (P.S. my girlfriend and her 7-year-old can both hold fish better than me.)



There was much to glean from the first leg of the trip. I loved following the loon family and listening to their calls. Eagles soared high above, and we watched an osprey catch a fish a mere fifty feet from our pontoon. Nature is what pleases me, and I haven’t been short on the visuals yet.

 
More than a feeling: this picture expresses the culmination of every event on the past four years of my life. You cannot feel what I feel when I see this picture, but I hope you can understand that this is my happiest moment in life. I am free.

One of my favorite moments of that first leg was going to a butcher shop in the middle of the woods. The worst part of that shopping trip was that they were out of pork cutlets. Only people who know what those are will understand how impactful that can be.

 


The girls had their own fun with some other children who were there for the week. It’s always easier when other kids are around to distract them from clinging on to us 24/7. The story is different at our current location where it is just us four, but of course, this is much needed family time.

Campfire. It’s been years since I sat around a proper campfire. Last night was the first, and I will get to that in the next post. I should write more about Cut Foot while it’s still in my mind.

Jumping ahead a little, this is the first campfire I built in sobriety. It brought back a lot of memories of drunken Vince, some good, some bad. None of those mattered this day, though. I sat back with my loves and enjoyed the sights and sounds of nature.
 
We were in a small cabin with Amanda's father and his girlfriend. That’s six people in a small area for four days. Fortunately, the weather was permitting, and we spent nearly every available moment basking in the sun and cooking meals on the grill. We made several walks down to the resort office which doubled as a grocery store/bar/gift shop/bait shop/gas station/etc… They also had ice cream which is what we were after. Kids and adults all should like ice cream. If you know any adults that don’t like some form of the dessert, you shouldn’t trust them. We indulged ourselves. My favorite part about eating ice cream with children is that we make the same amount of mess on our faces and shirts. Actually, I’ve just been told that that is just me, and most adults are more responsible about keeping themselves neat and tidy, even on vacation.

The four days sped on by in a flash and it was time to pack up, sleep, and hit the road in the morning for a three-hour tour that would bring us to Minong, WI to my aunt and uncle’s cabin on a small, pristine lake in the middle of not much.

 

More to be revealed…

 

 

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