Memorial Day Weekend at the Cabin

 

Memorial Day Weekend at the Cabin

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for May 29, 2023

On Sunday night, we went to see Bill Mahar perform at Mystic Lake casino.  He's a funny guy.  Naturally they scare the crap out of people about taking photographs during the show, so we wait until the closing moments and usually fail to get a good shot.  Next time I'm just going to risk being tackled by the security guards instead.

Miss Sheri's aunt & cousin & her family lived in Minnesota up until about 20 years ago, then they moved to Arizona and California.  They moved back to Minnesota during Covid, but we hadn't been able to connect until Wednesday.  We shared many good stories and laughs and I hope we get to see them more often now that they're home again.

We don't get to spend much time with little ones these days, so we had fun meeting young Carson.  He's a cutie!

On Friday night, we drove about an hour north to Clearwater, Minnesota to visit our good friends, The Korkowskis.  They invited us to spend the holiday weekend with them so we jumped at the chance to hang out at the lake for a couple days.

Luke joined us for the first evening.  He's been getting more and more into fishing these days so he was excited for the opportunity to try out a new spot.  Unfortunately he didn't have much luck this trip, but even a bad day of fishing is still better than a good day at work!

Sue & Ron have a pontoon boat so we go for frequent cruises throughout our stay.  We'd planned to go swimming, but the water is still pretty cold.  I jumped in for a while on Saturday, but it was pretty frigid so nobody joined me for the adventure.  Little did they know that I just had to go pee.

The Swanks & Korkowskis get pretty competitive with one another on the Settlers of Cataan board.  There's a lot of wheeling and dealing as well as a fair amount of backstabbing while we try to build our roads, houses, & settlements and trade various bricks, sheep, and wood with one another.  Unfortunately it wasn't my weekend.  My settlers were ambushed, sacrificed, & enslaved by Ron & Grace during our two matches.  It's a pretty rough game.

Blue joined us for the trip, but we don't see him a lot as he pretty much stays in the water the whole weekend.  He also barks at us to throw him the ball from time to time, but we try to discourage that kind of behavior.

Our bags game are about as competitive as our board games.  Sheri & Sue dominated the rest of us, but I'm pretty sure they had some kind of foreign object advantage embedded in their bags.  I couldn't get any cornhole officials on the phone to confirm anything so we just let it slide.

Sue's brother Ron and his good friend Janet joined us on Saturday afternoon for the festivities.  We always have a good time when they're around.

 On Sunday morning, Miss Sheri & Sue took out the kayaks in the morning.  I tried to follow them on the pedal boat but that thing is a lot more work than it looks.  I gotta get in shape one of these years.

Eventually Grace joined me and we did a tour of the nearby area.  We saw big carp at the surface of the water in these weeds near Turtle Island.  Grace said she'd never seen any turtles in this area and there isn't any island so we're really not sure how it got that name.  Seeing the carp was cool, though.

We knew Blue would try to follow-us on the boats if we was outside while we launched them, so we put him in the cabin.  Somebody let him out while we were out on our adventure.  He didn't look very happy as we pulled back up to the dock.  He eventually jumped in the water to join us and that seemed to make him happy again.

It was a nice date weekend with my wife!

I hope you all had a great Memorial Day weekend!