Back at the Wisconsin lake, cats are reviving their summer traditions

Dwight Peck's personal website

Summer 2024

A photographic record of whatever leapt out at us

You may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.

Back at the Wisconsin lake, cats are reviving their summer traditions

14-21 June 2024

After a five day road trip with cats and a cat litter box, big bags of necessaries, Culver's butterburger wrappers and cardboard iced tea cups, and now . . . Northwoods pollen all over everything. Time for a wash-up.

The Friday fish fry at the Norwood Pines Supper Club (come early!)

Cats engage on the walkway to the boathouse and . . .

. . . proceed in tandem.

But Melvin's forgotten why they were proceeding here . . .

. . . and now Choupette's forgotten, too.

Urbino (Federico Montefeltro's palace), 2015

The new snuggly bed is a great hit . . . unfortunately, it's a hit with both cats. When Choupette gets it first, all's good; when Melvin gets to it first, normally Choupie will wangle him out of it. So this is an exceptional moment.

Melvin investigating . . .

. . . boldly.

The cats, in the course of their rounds, have discovered the old wood pile and . . .

. . . must investigate this, too.

And explore, daringly (Choup is the daring explorer of the team)

Successfully summiting, leading to . . .

. . . doubts.
(The camera-person's doubts about this higgledy-piggledy pile of rollable little loggies were unnecessary; she just turned about and scampered back down the same way.)

Choupette asserting her feline rights to some attention, now.
(When the need for attention hits, they both head straight for the keyboard.)

Choppy seas out to the main island

The first three weeks of June's weather here has been iffy, cloudy, stormy sometimes, always windy in the afternoon, quite chilly (except sometimes over 70°F by mid-afternoon) -- very frustrating, whilst the rest of the USA is enjoying heat domes, 110°F in the shade, thunderstorms and tornadoes, water shortages and droughts, wildfires and flooding. It just isn't fair.

That's our favorite island, Baby Leigh, because we think it looks like a pirate ship.

A rocky reef with trees, and an extremely beat-up old sign from the state prohibiting camping on it. Loud parties, too, probably. (Though it does provide a nesting home in some years for the loons.)

Here are some little visitors coming round the other side of the island.

A Merganser family outing. It looks like six or seven wee ones -- we saw a mom with ten a few days earlier and, happily, a few days later as well. A sad part of summer on the lake is that normally the number of wee ones in the parade tends to dwindle with time, one of the reasons we hate eagles.

The comfy studiolo . . .

. . . with company.

We've been watching Choupette sitting there in her Egyptian pose for the past ten minutes.

Something's either got her attention, or she's hoping that it will get her attention.

It's the hunting instinct.

Perpetually overcast skies these days

One of the other cottages on the property, another of the sibling families.

Mel was snoozing peacefully in the snuggly bed just five minutes ago, but is now snoozing peacefully out of it.

-- What shall we do today then?

-- Go back to bed?

Melvin has been having a sad look at our 30-year-old No. 2 hydrobike, which has got its gears locked up and recently been declared irreparable.

But the No. 1 bike is still in creakily fine form, and is now passing the Tigertail. Note that nasty shoreline erosion -- in part natural, but much worse since the advent of high speed 'wake boats'.

There is a path leading down from a small carpark; the Tigertail was donated a few years ago as part of the Northwoods Lands Trust's Yawkey Forest Reserve, but is not part of the reserve that is closed to the public for ecological reasons.

Past the Tigertail into the South Shore Bay ('Indian Bay' on the old map below), and . . .

. . . a look at the more recent eagle's nest farther along the southeast side of Tigertail Point.

That appeared, as if miraculously, two or three years ago.

Inhospitable territory down the side of the point

A 'hidden' cove along the side of the point, leading to a 'very hidden' little swamp thing that we've yearned for years to try getting back into on the bikes.

Naturally, we always slide in here carefully.

That's the little hidden swamp thing back in there. The entrance was protected during the years of lower lake levels by the shoreside growth of the tag alders, which took another few years to die off and open a potential way in. [A few hardy hangers-on are poking out of the water on the right.]

Last year we hacked the vegetation out of the entrance incrementally, and finally made a bold attempt. Unfortunately, Cousin Rob found that it's further blocked by a lot of sizable rocks. Here's Cousin Rob realizing that we have no further hopes of success.

At that time, our cameraman scrambled over that shore reef and got a closer look at the little cove, and we all agreed that it would not have been worth the trouble anyway.

More of the South Shore Bay shoreline

Destructive forces of nature

Most of this is part of the Yawkey Forest Reserve as well.

This is part of the stretches along the north end of South Shore Bay that are and will remain undeveloped, but here's a small area with three elaborate modern houses with boathouses.

More fish nests for their eggs, filled in with something we don't need to know about

Coming back out of South Shore Bay, we're passing Pink Island (named for a medical doctor in a nearby town back in the lumbering days).

And here's the little beach on the southern side of it, with a Yawkey Reserve sign indicating that this is one of the three islands on the lake that are closed to the public for environmental reasons. Never mind, we've tried to explore around on it over past years, and the whole thing is virtually impenetrable. Nothing to see.

The western end of Pink, with Tigertail about 70m beyond it, and the long chute northward to the main lake on the left.

Tigertail Point itself from head on

The little rocky reef between the mainland and Ryden's or Beaver Island. We've always challenged the thing by trying to hydrobike over it, the 'Crossing of the Bar' we called, and this time it didn't work; the wind was against us. We had to clamber off and haul the bike over the thing.

Raymond's or Crescent Island with its little cabin on the point (the main cottage is up the hill on the right), and the submerged reef running off to the left.

We know that we're approaching the North Bay when we pass this old wreck.

Melvin got to the comfy bed first this time; Choupette was sitting on my lap for a while, staring at it, and then couldn't restrain herself.

She begins by pretending to just want to be friends -- often they lick each other for a bit -- until Melvin patiently just gives it up with no hard feelings.

And this is what Melvin usually does next . . .

. . . just goes back to sleep alongside it.

The Lake in the Wisconsin Northwoods

Mussent Point is at no. 12.

Next up: The Ottawa team visits us on the lake