Last week Art and I headed up to Bemidji, Minnesota for a week-long vacation. This was kind of a big deal for us because we have never taken a vacation with just the two of us; whenever we've gone places it's been because I happen to have a meeting there (like Arizona) or it's a family gathering. We drove up on Sunday and arrived in the evening. What's amazing about being that far North is that the sun doesn't set until almost 9:00. It also messes with my internal clock because we never at dinner before that time and went to sleep a few hours after that. We haven't slept in past 9:00 in years- it was amazing.
I was a little worried about how Art would handle vacation; he's never good at just sitting for days at a time and doesn't feel right if he doesn't so some kind of work. There were a few trees that had fallen down over the last year, so we took an afternoon clearing and mowing the paths around the island. The weather was unusually hot- 87 degrees and humid- and because there is so much poison ivy and poison oak, wearing long pants and long-sleeved shirts made the job less than enjoyable.
Wednesday (July 4th) we were catching some sun on the dock when the radio announced a thunderstorm warning. A storm had rolled through the day before and caused a lot of damage in the city of Bemidji, but none where we were. At 2:00 in the afternoon, this is what the sky looked like:
It was the worst storm we had ever been through. Pouring rain, thunder, lightning, and 80 mile an hour straight-line winds made us pretty nervous. The safest part of the island is a cabin on the back side of the island, but the storm was already in full force and I wasn't about to risk walking (or running) down a path surrounded by trees to get there. So Art and I stayed in the back hallway, looking out the screened door watching and listening to trees falling all around us. The storm went on for almost an hour and we eventually lost power.
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| This was on the mainland- an entire tree uprooted and crushing a pontoon boat |
We spent the rest of that afternoon and the next day clearing away all of the fallen trees. We were trying to figure out how we lost power- the power line on the island was fine, so we took a boat ride over to the mainland to see if that was the cause (the power line from the mainland to the island is underwater). We discovered that a neighbor's tree had fallen on the power line, breaking it and blowing the transformer. No one had power in the general area. We helped clean up a few more trees before heading back to the island.
We didn't have power, but we had charcoal so we had a lovely dinner of steaks, potatoes, and beans. We bathed in the lake and because I refuse to use the outhouse on account of the huge spiders, we brought up pails and pitchers of water from the lake to flush the toilet.
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| This picture came from the Internet, but these are what lives in the outhouse |
After the storm I went outside and was greeted by this:
It was the biggest bird I had ever seen. I quickly opened my Audubon Society Bird guide on my Kindle (yes, I'm a nerd) and discovered it was a 1-2 year old bald eagle. I think he was stunned from the storm as he didn't fly away (I didn't actually get this close, I have a great zoom on my camera) and did more of a hopping to get around. I wasn't sure if it was stunned or hurt, but I couldn't get a hold of anyone at the DNR office (it being a federal holiday) and he was gone the next day. I'm assuming he came out of here:
This nest has been on the island for years and it was so neat to see the adult eagle flying around the island.
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| This is an eagle nest on the mainland- you can see the babies around the top edge. |
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