All that a vacation should be

We've been home a full day now, and the dogs are still zonked.

Eight days at the cabin that we think of as ours (it's actually owned by an Iowa dentist and his wife, and we've rented it for four Septembers) is always just what we need to ease into winter. We eat, we read, we nap, we hike, we walk down to the dock at sunrise to watch the ducks, we watch movies, we watch the dogs. And then we nap again. (I had many two-nap days.)

I read seven books.

Last year, we had gorgeous sunny weather and brilliant fall colors. This year the colors were muted, because it had been such a dry, warm summer. But it is still a beautiful time of year.

And the weather! We had every kind of weather possible, just about, except snow: Warm, reading-on-the-deck-in-the-sunshine afternoons. Rain. Frost. And twenty-four hours of gale-force winds that downed trees and power lines and swamped boats at harbor. We drove into Grand Marais that day, because it was too dangerous to be hiking, with trees and branches snapping off left and right.

This picture, shot hastily before I blew into the water, does not do justice to the fierceness of the wind and the power of those waves. One of those sailboats was slowly going under.

We had gone to town hoping to find a warm spot to have lunch, but all the other hikers and leaf-peepers had the same idea, and it was standing-room-only at Sven and Ole's Pizza, at the Blue Water Cafe, at the Gunflint Tavern, at the Angry Trout, and so we headed back down the Shore to our cabin, only to find the power out.

No power meant no water, as well as no lights (we had heat, of a sort--a propane-powered gas fireplace, though the blowers, of course, weren't working). So I drove back into town to buy supplies, shopping by flashlight and spending way too much on candles because the general store was sold out and all I could find were expensive scented candles at the little gift shop. (The clerk kindly warned me off of one lovely pine-scented pillar candle that was priced at $29.)

The power came on again in time for us to make dinner and watch a movie, and then shut off again in the middle of the night and stayed off until 10 a.m. In the morning, we hauled water up from the lake in dishpans so that we could flush the toilet.


That night the temperature dropped to 25 degrees; the next morning the grass was frosty and the dock gleamed silver. Mist rose off the lake, burning away slowly as the temperature warmed.

It was a gorgeous sunrise. And that afternoon, the day after the wind storm, the day after the frost, it warmed up to 50 degrees and we hiked up the forest trail an hour and then spread a blanket in the sun and read.

The boys played. Riley rolled in something disgusting, over and over.



And then back to the cabin, for more food, more reading, more naps.