gcgoldday3p1

Gayle Carline

Gold Lake Initiation
Day 3
Page 1 of 2

    The next morning, the breakfast area was abuzz with the events that had taken place while we were sleeping. It seems that there was a wildlife encounter in the middle of the night. Although the cabins were all clean, sometimes there are problems in the wilderness with unwanted creatures, like insects. Or mice. And of all of the cabins in the lodge, whose cabin should be overrun with rodents in the wee hours? That’s right, the Big Haired Gal’s. I’m sure that if the mice knew they were invading the space of the Okra Queen, they would have at least curtsied. According to Alyssa, they just scampered around her floor merrily. Alyssa is afraid of mice; I am not, but I can understand her fear. My friend once asked why women will work with 1000-lb horses that can crush them, but will run screaming if they see a mouse. I told him the answer is simple: a horse will never run up your pant leg. So, at one o’clock in the morning, Alyssa grabbed her 9-month old daughter and ran twenty yards in the dark to Kathy’s place in a panic, demanding to sleep there. As she told her story at breakfast, no one could believe that she would risk running into a bear in the middle of the night just to escape a mouse, but I could. A bear won’t run up your pant leg.
     That was the last night of Alyssa’s stay in that cabin. The lodge put her up in a cute little whitewashed one-room affair for the rest of her visit, although how they mouse-proofed it, I don’t know.
     Our destination on Saturday was Salmon Lake. It’s a medium-sized lake that is only accessible by one narrow road leading down steeply to a miniscule parking lot. Amazingly, it has a dock that people carefully maneuver their trucks and trailers around to launch their boats. At the end of the small lot there is a little path that leads around the lake. The water’s edge is quite close to the path, separated only by spindly trees and leggy bushes. This lake is as pretty and cool and crystalline as the others, and it has the added feature of a small island about 25 feet from the shore.
     Gary drove his van down into the parking lot, squeezing past the cars, to unload Angelique… and the cooler and the beach chairs and the toys. Dale and I schlepped our cooler, chairs and towels from the hill. Jeannie and her boys managed somehow to get their innertubes and beach paraphernalia to the site also. Her husband, Dave, had gone on the Death March to Mt. Elwell. But more on that later.
     Linda found a couple of small coves amongst the trees for us to set up base camp. We carefully squeezed coolers and chairs into the limited space. The other two families had not joined us for this trip, which was for the best, since I didn’t know how we would fit one more person on this little piece of shoreline.
     A couple of hours later, however, the rest of the gang did show up. There were towels, coolers and chairs stuffed in every nook and cranny of those trees. It looked like the Garden Department of K-Mart had exploded. But everyone had fun. The kids had a great time on the island, taking turns jumping off the rocks into the lake and even piloting Angelique.
     After several hours of merriment, it was time to pack up, which meant that we had to repeat all of the car maneuvering and general schlepping that we did in the morning. It reminded me of one of those little games where you try to put the puzzle squares in the right order, with one empty space. “Okay, move the green car up and to the right, then scoot the white car in next to it so you can move the yellow dually down…” Eventually everyone got down, got loaded, and got out.

Gold Lake Main

Unpublished Ramblings

Home