Home Away from Home

It’s our final day at the lake. It seems like we’ve been here for a very long time. And yet, our two weeks have flown by.

Since this is our 16th year at Birch Villa on Cass Lake and we’ve spent two weeks here nearly every one of those years, we’ve likely spent over 30 weeks in “our” cabin. It really does feel like our home away from home. But it’s time to start thinking about our real home. Our cat Migizi (named after the trail we found him on six years ago), is probably missing us.

Another fun fact: today is July 16–the date of our engagement 34 years ago on the shores of West Lost Lake, also in Minnesota.

We started our day with another goodbye. Chloe is taking off early so she can visit her friends in the cities and get home a little early for another friend’s college graduation party. We packed her car with the stuff we could live without for a day, watched her say “goodbye” to the lake, and gave her hugs before sending her off.

We spent the rest of our last day much like every other day over the past two weeks. Tom and I headed out to Pike Bay with my cousins’ boats nearby. We went back to the hotspots we found yesterday and managed to catch 14 perch between the two of us in a little over two hours. Not bad for our final fishing day.

While Tom cleaned fish, I listened to my book and started packing. Leah reveled in the lake views and the light breeze off of the water as she worked on her diamond painting.

Before the day was over, Tom and I had to take one more bike ride on the Migizi. We were only going to go a few miles in and then double back to save our old knees. But once we were sailing along, we decided to go for it and did the entire 14-mile loop. Tom is gradually building up his endurance on the new trike and is hopeful his knee is healing as it should.

We finished up most of the packing and sunk our heads into our pillows early as we anticipated an early morning wake-up call.