Das Boat

Day 3

It's July 1st, and today Clint and I need to figure out what our plan is for the rest of our vacation here. Today, Grandma has a physical therapy appointment in town, and we decide to go with her and have her drop us at the mall while she's in rehab. She lets us off at Kohls, where Clint finds some new shorts and I get a T-shirt. With about 45 minutes left until Grandma comes to pick us up, we decide to walk across the street to the other mall nearby.

Now, by mall I don't mean giant shopping center with lots of stores and eateries. The malls here that I am referring to are strip malls with no internal access to one another. So, we begin walking toward the other mall and very quickly realize that this is the hottest and muggiest day that we have experienced since our arrival. We walk for a couple of minutes, and sweat starts forming down our backs; yuck! We finally reach JCPeneny, and just sit inside the cool. air conditioned store and wait for Grandma.

When we get back to the cottage, Clint and I take the canoe out for its first trip of the season. Having no idea what the lake looks like other than directly behind the cottage, I take Clint on the scenic tour of the lake and head toward the other end. It was a beautiful day, about 10 degrees cooler at the lake than in town, so the weather was perfect. Perfect except for the looming thunder cloud that has appeared over the course of our trip to the other end of the lake. When we reach the dead middle of the big end of the lake; BOOM! There is thunder right over top of us. Now, when there's a thunder storm, generally it's a good idea to get off of the water as soon as you can. In a canoe and at the other end of the lake, as soon as we can takes about 30 minutes. Clint and I start paddling like crazy to make for the dock and get out of the water.

On our way back to the dock, of course, the sky opens up and starts raining. It's not too hard of a rain, though, but enough that with the wind, it makes the hairs on my arms stand at attention. By the time we return to the dock, the thundering has been reduced to a low and distant rumble, the skies have cleared, and the sun us starting to return.

So we jump in.