River Day 03/28/2011

Even though half of the regulars for River Day couldn't make it this week, the holiday was still celebrated. Ted and I enjoyed a laid back evening this time around.

The weather turned nice in the afternoon and we had clear blue skies. The temp was in the mid 40's before the sun started setting, but dropped quickly after that. We had a nice fire going, but nothing too extreme this week.

I was encouraged by Jay catching his first fish of the season last week and was confident that they would be biting. I had a line in the water for at least three hours and never had the first bite! Oh well, it's always a waiting game this time of year; one week nothing, and the next you catch something on nearly every cast.

Everything is really starting get green along the river and it looks like the yard at the camp could already stand a mowing. Won't be long now.

Sorry, no pictures this week. I took a camera with me but never took it out of the case.

River Day 03/21/2011

Ok, I know, this is a late post. One week late to be exact. The bright side is, it's just in time for this week's River Day Celebration!

Tim, Jay, and I made it down this week and we all spent a good part of the evening fishing. No one caught anything but we were optimistic. The bait store at the top of the hill had helgrammites and Jay picked up a dozen and brought them down. (As a side note, Jay went back down to the river a couple of days later and caught the first fish of the season.)

There is still a good bit of debris laying around from the earlier flooding, so we had plenty of stuff to burn. Several of the trees along the river were already budding and the grass is starting to "green up".

Although the focus was on fishing instead of the fire this week, we still had the best one on the river!

River Day 03/14/2011

Mother Nature caused us to postpone last week's River Day celebration by way of flooding on the river. After almost a year to the day, the river again left its banks and flooded the camp where we normally get together for National River Day. As you can tell from the photos, there was some damage left behind, as well as a lot of debris, but the aftermath wasn't nearly as devastating as last years flood. The newly restored building still stands!

We got into a couple of "projects" this week, so there are a few pictures and videos this week. Those that made it down were Ted, Tim, Jay and I.

Tim brought down a simple balsa wood glider and a few rocket engines. I'm sure this was one of his finest "what if we..." moments. After a few alterations to the plane, we attached a rocket engine to it and then used Jay's launch pad to try to get the plane airborne. It really was a great theory (on paper, but not in practice). The plane survived the first launch, but not so much the second. After the glider disintegrated on the 2nd attempt, we used Tim's last engine taped to a bamboo stick like a huge bottle-rocket. Now that was a flight!

The next project was burning Tim's discarded Christmas tree from 2010 (notice how all these ideas this week were Tim's?). Well, maybe more of an adventure than a project. I'm pretty sure after this that I'll never have a live tree in my house again. I don't know if the picture or videos do this carnage justice or not, but the flames off this tree had to hit 30 feet in about 30 seconds.

If we didn't have the best fire on the river, we definitely had the highest.

Temps were nice this week, low 40's, with a little rain for most of the evening. I tried fishing for a while with no luck, but I don't think it will be long now.

Sorry for taking so long to get this posted.