Gotta love fire

So,the weekend rocked. I would have written about it yesterday, but I was so busy...more on that later. Katie gave a good synopsis of the events, so I will sum up :) Friday was a beautiful, if somewhat cold, night. We arrived at the property, and put our stuff in order, and then took a walk around the 20 or so acres my parents own. We were in the NW corner, inspecting fence and I was telling a story, when all of a sudden, a ball of black fuzz goes hopping and speeding off into the distance. Upon further inspection, said ball of black fuzz had two white stripes on it...Meet Mr. Skunk (he lives there, we think). Luckily, he recognized his noisy and somewhat funny smelling two legged neighbors (I think they don't like the smell of fire, really) and was kind enough not to spray us. We walked the property for the rest of the perimeter in the gathering darkness with only a few stumbles, no ticks, and good convo. Friday night was FREEZING in the camper, but I still managed to sleep.

Saturday my mom and aunt made us breakfast at the farmhouse (my aunt lives about 2 min. by car down the road, about a 15 min walk). Then Dad, Ryan, Chris, Katie, Rachel and I set off to the property to haul some auxilary wood for the big bonfire (which was about 20 feet in diameter and at least 8 or 9 feet tall) and we set up some other things. We ate hamburgers for lunch sitting by the big pile, and Rachel and I had to keep getting up and going to get more wood to stay warm. It was sunny for a while, but the wind had a bit of a bite to it. Saturday evening at 4 pm we lit the big pile. It took a while to get going...we tried four different places before it took off. And away it took! The flames were 25 feet, shooting sideways, burning grass and licking at the remains of a pile I insisted we move to the other side of the pile earlier. Those remains were small though, and didn't start on fire. it burned that way for a few minutes, and then calmed down into a normal sized--well a super sized bonfire. I think bonfires are about the only thing that should be super sized. Rachel and I had hauled some trees down to be cut by the chainsaw, but since that never happened, we just threw them on whole..and they burned just fine.

Sunday we had breakfast with my aunt again, and then got ready to do some hiking on Eagle Trail in Penninsula State Park. Renae and Graham had now joined us, and we enjoyed hiking along the bluff, attempting to skip rocks, avoidance of mosquitos and bay flies (more bay flies than mosquitos, luckily) and exploring mini-caves. We were just about back to the one car (one was at the bottom, one at the top of the hike) when the sky decided it was about time to act like Memorial Day in the Park. That is to say, rain like the dickens. By the time we got the other car, people were wet, but not drenched. (Unlike my brother Troy and his gf Amanda, who went kayaking and apparently almost drown. The story got more and more elaborate as the evening went on, as all good tales must, so we're not sure exaclty how much drowning and how much fear of drownign was involved.) We played Spinner (a kind of dominos) with my aunt before supper, and then had a wonderful spagetti dinner before going and starting our own fire in the pit at the property. Can you tell we were fed really well all weekend long?

We woke up Monday to some really heavy rain, and it had been raining all early morning and morning. (from 3am to 9am when we woke). That got me to thinking of our ditch, and its tendency to hold water. So, we packed up, ran everything to the cars, and managed to negotiate the 'driveway' without getting stuck. We had breakfast at my aunt's again, then drove back to GB, said goodbye to Katie, and headed back to MN. A great weekend, and I'm still kinda tired today from it all. Though, being up late last night reading my newest book probably doesn't help.