What a week

Once my daughter and two grandgirls arrived to visit last Tuesday, my time for writing posts or reading blogs evaporated.  We were busy from the moment they arrived until this morning. 

Wednesday, Avery and Phoebe were off to the morning’s children’s program at the Chippewa Picnic Area while Bridget and I started the Loon Survey.  After lunch we headed for the visitors center.  The girls spent quite some time watching all the birds at the feeders.

Later we visited the settler’s cabins area that is only open to the public during the Fall Festival weekend.

One of the staff had suggested going there for photos.  He had hauled an old car frame to the area that he had found hidden elsewhere on the refuge.  It made for some nostalgic photo ops.  Robyn took this photo of Phoebe and Avery.  She’s thinking of entering it in the refuge photo contest. 

Thursday we headed off for a picnic at Itasca State Park thinking it wouldn’t be too crowded before the holiday weekend.  We were sure wrong about that, but the girls had a grand time donning their swimsuits and splashing around in the headwaters of the mighty Mississippi River.

On Friday, July 4th, my oldest son Daniel and his wife Crystal arrived.  They both had lots of help setting up their tent in my front yard.  Robyn and the girls stayed with me in the rig.

                       Starting on the left – Robyn, Daniel, John, Bridget, Phoebe, Crystal, and Avery.

We dragged over the extra picnic table from John and Bridget’s site and enjoyed a tasty July 4th BBQ.  John brought ribs and I fixed the smoked pork chops with pineapple.  We had fruit and a couple of salads and literally ate ‘high off the hog’.  Breaking bread with family and good friends can’t be beat!

As I finished the dishes, I heard music coming from John and Bridget’s site.  Who would have guessed that John plays the dulcimer?  Do you see what he is plucking the strings with?  I have heard that back in the day the best thing to use for playing the dulcimer was a feather from the left wing of a wild turkey.  Well, at least five years ago, I found two left wing turkey feathers at Rice Lake State Park.  I have been saving them ever since hoping to find a dulcimer player that could use them.  Cool beans!

John played some snappy tunes, and it got the rest of us to tapping our feet or jumping up to do a little jig.  The girls even got to try playing his first dulcimer.  The one John was playing sounded just like a banjo.  A fun time.  I still have my soprano recorder tucked away in a drawer.  Maybe I should get it out and practice up.  Maybe we could have an old time jam session some time. 

I’ll cover the rest of our weekend in another post.  Lots more happened, and I admit that I’m pretty worn out today.  It also doesn’t help that I’ve seen to have caught the cold, or whatever, that Avery and Robyn brought with them.  Hard to avoid the germs with four of us in the rig…

Thanks for stopping by… talk to you later,  Judy