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.
Some fragmentary recollections from a long midsummer
Some little cats just have a built-in knack for this sort of thing (8 August 2026).
At last some rain (but it's not helping very much - we're already down about 4 inches in the lake)
Some cats sleep in a dignified manner. Others just sprawl.
The town council has (a bit surprisingly) finally brought in a verdict outlawing, not the wake boats themselves, but their use in turning on those horrible 'enhanced wakes' that terrorize the residents and tourists, poison the waters with imported invasives, and undercut all of our shorelines.
Not that these shorelines are going to revivify anytime soon, but it's the principle of the thing. Some of our handful of wake boat owners and fans are quite unhappy about it, it's true (and there are no enforcement mechanisms on the lake here) . . . but it's the principle of the thing.
Here's a very nice, clean, and spacious room, 5 August 2026, in Wausau-Weston, and . . .
. . . a fine bouquet of flowers sent in by Kristin's George and Emily (and 'Little Buddy').
A brief walk round downtown Wausau (to which this photo doesn't do any real justice, but we were in a hurry to get home).
The Children's Imaginarium, which appears finally to be operational on the territory of the Wausau Mall that was well and truly torn down. In our walk all round Wausau in 2023, its posters proclaimed its opening in 2023, though the Mall was still skeletally all over this space. From its website, it appears to be an amazing place.
Wausau, by the way, is not a bad little town of 40,000 on the Wisconsin River; we've been attending the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum 'Birds in Art' festival in September for years. Kristin grew up there, but except for long summers apparently didn't linger otherwise.
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The Point o' Pines 'Annex', central to the other branch of the clan just south of our Mussent Point enclave. Here we celebrated pleasant annual dinner parties in August when Cousin Rob and Elke had their turn in residence.
We had a convivial dinner here on 8 August this year as well, very nice, though it wasn't quite the same in Cousin Rob's absence, and there were quite a few people whom we'd never seen before and who didn't really need us. Time marches on.
Cute little cats scouting for game
Not really, just exploring. Melvin doesn't even hunt bugs anymore; he enjoys sitting outside and staring all round him, as if marveling. Choupette, on the other hand, remains embarrassingly successful as a small game hunter.
What can we say? No more hunting!! even if you can't genetically help yourself. But no squirrels or robins!!!
Ellie Marquis (in training for a triathlon) takes time out for an iPhone photograph . . .
. . . of her dad and his friend.
Note: Ellie's dad doesn't have a required lifesaver on his bike.
Little Buddy's toys need to get stacked up in piles sometimes, well, frequently.
The back porch in Kristin's cottage has now got a slide for children. Young George screams with laughter each time he lands at the bottom.
Sometimes we need to pay tribute to a venerable former member of our swamp, now passing into history in the 'Frog Bay'. Here it is on . . .
An entirely authentic 'Mirror Lake'. For a day. Maybe two. Or maybe just till noon.
The Putative Moraine
From time to time, we like to look in on the weird shoreline ridge, along the eastern side of the Sandy Beach Bay, with its parallel swamp behind. This looks like a good place to pull the bike up on shore. (13 August 2026)
The water level of the lake is dropping fast. Who likes creeping over a mass of malicious little sharp-edged stones just to get ashore.
But once again, we've made it okay so far.
We'll fret about getting back down a little later, and for the moment, just have fun.
The hydrobike will wait for us (we've planted the propeller guard in amongst the rocks).
Folks who've spent time in present or former glacial environments may agree that this looks much like a terminal or lateral moraine. Perhaps it is one, though how it might have got here would be an awkward question.
There certainly were glaciers here at one time, though the positioning here would be fairly odd, just along about 130m (440 ft) at the foot of this hill on the left.
Cousin Rob was of the opinion that it was the result of the annual retreat of the ice on the lake, but that's a bit hard to picture as well.
That's one end of the 'moraine' leading up the hill towards Cousin Rob's and Elke's house overlooking the entrance to Tomahawk Bay.
We'll walk along it, to the south a ways.
We're approaching the length of the offshore grass beds, but the moraine strip continues beyond them.
We've visited here a few times when this parallel back side was water-soggy at least to a few inches, and muddy, but it's presently just squashy.
Perhaps that's enough for today. We'll see how much farther we can get some other day.
There's at least a little muddiness here, in these dehydrated times.
There is a path towards Cousin Rob's house that runs up that hill but we can't remember where it started out. Not anywhere very near here certainly, but probably round the bend of the bay towards the former picnic area at Sandy Beach (now an off-limits part of the Yawkey Forest Reserve).
-- All right, all right, we're coming.
We can't resist a flyby of our favorite island of the seven on the lake -- the state-owned reef (in effect) known (from the very old days) as 'Baby Leigh'.
We're inclined to think that it has the general looks of a pirate ship, and that would be the bow end of it.
There's no real way to set a foot on it, which (according the state's sign) is illegal anyway. They've even put up a rattled old 'No Camping' sign. We're told that at some point someone forgot to pay the state property tax on it. So it's theirs. More power to them.
Ryden's Island
That's the island called on the old maps 'Beaver Island', but which we call Ryden's Island because they own it. It's at the gap between the main lake and the strait down to the Tigertail and southern bays (also 13 August 2026).
There was a dock here, not so many years ago -- only that rubbishy unattached bit of it remains.
The island is an island when it's cut off from the mainland (on the left) . . .
. . . like this, though the water level is perilously low now and the island could get reattached again. During the drought years, when I first started coming here to visit Kristin, that was all well out of the water.
And it soon may well be again. Then we'll only have six islands.
It's technically illegal, but perhaps we'll dash ashore to remind ourselves, very briefly, what it's really like here.
The 'vestigial dock leftover' is shaky, especially double-plus-ungood for aging knees, but the bit of shore just to its left beckons out to us.
-- Wait here, Bike, we'll only be a minute.
-- Right, we know. But look here, your rude poster hasn't even been signed.
There must have been a time when this would have been a pretty popular public sort of picnicky place.
From Ryden's Island, we're looking straight south down what we're inclined these days to call the 'Strait of Tigertail' to the southern bays.
We'll stroll over to see the connection to the mainland, which we've always called 'the Bar' . . .
. . . because our sometimes successful (and often unsuccessful) hydrobike attacks on getting over it, at full speed and propellers up, we called the 'Crossing of the Bar'.
Though, mind you, Tennyson was talking about dying. 'I hope to see my Pilot face to face / When I have cross’d the bar'.
The northern side of Ryden's
-- Coming, coming. Hold your propeller!
And leaving the island, we must remember to avoid the monster boulder just planted in the gap to the upper lake.
The northern shore of Ryden's has got its own problems.
A last look (for today) of the Bar, as we head north for home
Oh, nice, we're awaited.
Basking turtles in the South Bay
Just one today. But, wait a minute . . .
. . . it's two today.
How'd he do that?
-- Go back to sleep, we're leaving now.
Two cats sorting out their difficulties with one another
Melvin's generally the very calm one. Like now.
The Lake in the Wisconsin Northwoods
Mussent Point is at no. 12.
The text overlays are updating a few names to our current understanding. We've noticed, though, that the Lake Katherine Association newsletter is mostly sticking to the original names, Beaver and Crescent Island and Manila and Indian Bay. [The former two are cute, but the latter two seem unwelcome these days, if 'Manila Bay' celebrated the Battle of Manila Bay (when Cmdr Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet in 1898, about the time that our lake's canal was being dug out), and 'Indian Bay' sounds rather awkward these days, especially up here adjacent to the Ojibwe/Chippewa Lac de Flambeau Reservation.
The Northwoods Land Trust has produced a 7-min YouTube film, 'Land & Water: the heart and soul of the Northwoods', that features a number of beautiful aerial passes over Lake Katherine.
Next up: We await further dispatches.
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and suggestions are welcome if positive, resented if negative, 
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All rights reserved, all wrongs avenged. Posted 5 September 2026.
