Days 8-11 - Hanging out on Gun Lake

Saturday night we picked up Mark at the airport and then Sunday morning we headed for "The Cottage." The cottage is a little summer house on Gun Lake that my grandparents owned and sold to my parents. When I was young we spent every summer at the cottage. It sits right on the lake. Back then it was more like camping than living in a house. We washed our hair in bowls of lake water, hiked through woods to the state park beach, sat by the fire at night, and fell asleep on the porch listening to crickets and the waves lapping up on the shore. Currently the cottage is under construction. For years the little house sat while neighboring properties added on to their homes and winterized them, and now mom and dad have embarked on an improvement project, adding real bedrooms and bathrooms, and even a spot for laundry hook up. As with all construction projects, it has taken much more time and money than originally anticipated, and for this trip the project looked about 60% done. We had bedrooms and bathrooms but no kitchen, living room or dining room. But for cottage living, it was actually quite nice.

My cousin Bill keeps his pontoon boat at the dock and allows us to use it. The kids got to ride in a tube on the back of the boat, go fishing, dig a fire pit and roast hot dogs and make s'mores. Even though we slept in a real bedroom, the sliding glass door still looked right out on the lake, and the crickets were as loud as ever. Justin was so excited to catch his first three fish, and both kids wanted to stay much longer. I remember the lake being quite crowded the last few times I've visited, but this week for some reason it felt like we had the lake to ourselves. Mark was even able to do a swim accross the bay Monday morning with no boats coming anywhere near.

Tuesday, we finally needed to drive back to West Bloomfield to prepare for the last leg of our journey. Our time was filled with doing laundry, running to the library to access high speed internet and catch up on e-mail, getting packed, and even watching a little bit of the Olympics. Next leg - off through Canada through Niagara Falls.