SUMMER 2021

Here’s something you don’t see every day. This was created as part of Indiana’s BISON-TENNIAL celebration. There is a blue buffalo in all 92 of the state’s counties.

The summer literally got off to a roaring start. My brother in law Joel, is confined to a wheelchair which stinks, but one good thing about it is that he gets great seats for sporting events and is allowed to bring a “handler” to help him. So we went to the Indy 500 and were in the first row on turn 3. You could literally smell the tire rubber burning.

In early June we spent some time getting “lake therapy” up north. After all the world has been through in the last year, I wish everyone could spend some time at the lake. We hadn’t seen our sons for over a year, so it was unbelievable to hug them and their wife/girlfriend. And hearing the loons calling was fantastic. It was awfully hard to go home. The vaccines truly have been miraculous in how they’ve let our lives get back to mostly normal.

Dave and Courtney came up with us and brought their dog Baxter. Gilmore has been slowing down as he gets older but having a rival for attention really perked him up. Barbie got lots of dog kisses.

This eagle often sits in a tree by one of the spots where we like to fish. He is extremely photogenic. Until you’ve been up close to one it’s hard to understand how large they are. When this picture was taken he was only about 20’ from us. Their wingspans can get up to 7 ½ feet.

The hummingbirds are thick this time of year.

Mama loon on her nest.

Papa loon on patrol.

Presque Isle has the prettiest downtown I’ve ever seen. This dam is right in the middle of downtown and toward the top of the picture you can see a public fishing pier.

There is a shallow walking area above the dam where you can walk out in the water and look for tadpoles.

Seeing the tadpoles, reminded me of a tadpole story from when Barb and I were first married. In those days she liked to walk around Sandy Hollow golf course with me. The 11th hole had lots of tadpoles. We had several large aquariums and Barb wanted to bring some tadpoles home and put them in one of our aquariums. Being a new husband, I tried to make allowances for my wife’s strange inclinations, so we brought some home. A few weeks later we went out of town for the weekend and when we came back the tadpoles had changed into frogs and were hopping all over our apartment.  

This was the morning we left for home. The lake was like glass which made it difficult to leave.

On our way home we stopped at a place called “Days Gone By”. It’s a big field filled with large metal sculptures that are quite imaginative. It’s on highway 32 near Westfield.

Gilmore looks like he’s trying to decide what to have for dinner.

One of the things we like to do when the weather gets hot is to have pool parties. You can see Barb’s sister with her feet in “the pool.” It’s amazing how keeping your feet cool makes your whole-body cool.

One day Barb was out watering plants when she found this tree frog in one of our hanging baskets. He must be quite a jumper since this hanging basket is over 3’ off the ground.

Hope things are good in all of your worlds!