Ahhh...The Cottage Life!

Well I finally got up to the cottage on Kawagama Lake to put the boats in and put the water on. It was only a day trip. My son and I left about 10 am in the morning, picked his boat up along the way at a friends and and continued the 3 hour drive to the cottage. We got to the lake, successfully launched his boat amongst thousands of black flies trying to get a taste of us and drove over to the cottage. You can only get to our cottage from the water as we are on a peninsula with no road access. It is not far from the Marina, you can see our dock in the middle of the pic.



Now, normally the black flies and mosquitoes are only bad over at the marina. For some reason they are usually not nearly as bad over at the cottage. I had heard form others that the bugs were particularity bad this year but I just thought they were "bug wimps".
So we land, up the stairs to open the cottage (to put on coffee) and shed for tools. The bugs are bad. Hmmm..... the other boat is in the bush where the bugs are worse. It is not looking good!

Bring out the bug spray. Well I, as any self respecting person who has lived in the north knows, that only McKirdy's Repel-a-Fly works on Black Flies. Well there was none. The only thing there was Off! I don't use the stuff, find it useless but when that is all there is... So we spay each other and head off into the woods. Just as we pass the rockery we see this little guy sunning himself on a rock so I asked him to keep still while I got his photo and he complied.


Now my son has a fashioned a natural looking ramp to push the boat onto and down into the water. It is made of lengths of tree trunk slopping down to the lake. Works quite well unless the boat gets caught on the only huge rock at the bottom of the ramp and you have millions of black flies and mosquitoes flying around all eager to get get a part of you... and poor Son instantly wrenches his back, which he "NEVER DOES" and Mom being Mom doesn't want him to lift any more, but poor Son has to now get into the water (which is still freezing) and push the bottom of the boat away from the rock and oh yes, did I mention the millions of Blackflies and mosquitoes?
So now I am getting a little weary of the boats and the bugs and so on. Son had cleared the back end of the rock so I lifted the boat over to the left a couple of times from the front end and pushed! The boat accommodates and slides into the water! Nice! My son looks up at me and says" What did you do?" and I responded with "Got angry!'. It really was because my Son had cleared the back for take off though, it was easy after that. Now I have to jump into the boat and paddle it to the dock at the other side of the lot as the battery is dead and we forgot the gas tank in the shed but at least it is in. Two down and only the water to go!

So next is getting the the water on which starts with bringing up a couple of buckets of water from the lake for priming the pump. There is just enough of us left over from the flies in the bush for them to now feed on us getting the water on. Son is going to do the priming behind the cottage, I am cutting the lawn. Huh? How did that get in there? Well Son decided that there would be less bugs next time if we cut the lawn. True fact, but more flies this time. Argh..
Son gets the pump primed and asked me to turn on the pump in the cottage. IN the cottage! Those are lovely words. No flies in the cottage! And so I ran into the cottage and turned on the pump. We actually caught the prime right away which rarely happens only to lose it again just as quickly. But we got it going again successfully.Time for some much needed respite from the great outdoors and time for some coffee.

As we are sitting, enjoying a much deserved coffee filled mug, the pump comes on. All on it's own. It is only supposed to come on when you are running the water which means somewhere water was either running or leaking. Gee, why wasn't I surprised? So we check the cottage. Nope, no leaks, no leaks out side, maybe the foot valve on the end of the pipe going into the lake isn't closing properly. Check this out and yes this is the problem but, it is actually broken and we will need a new one. So, we lost the water prime and will have to do this pump priming all over again. Not this time but next time up. Son and I had about had it for the day and we still had a 3 hour drive home. So we cleaned up our tools, locked up the cottage and took the one boat over to the marina, to put in it's slip. The worst is over, the boats are in ready for us for next time when we can stay longer. Time to go. Round trip will be about 12 hours.
As I look back on our little cottage nestled in the beauty of a Haliburton forest, I wish I was staying. Blackflies, mosquitoes be damned! It is so green, so beautiful and in it's nature, so relaxing at the cottage, on the lake. I will be back soon!

Ahhh... the Cottage Life!