Wrapping up a pleasant summer on the lake

Dwight Peck's personal website

Summer 2026

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.

Wrapping up a pleasant summer on the lake

12 - 19 September 2026

The water level's way down -- the dried up shoreline stimulates Melvin's exploratory interest. 12 September 2026.

We're just offshore and panicking that the careless fellow could get tangled up in all our accumulated detritus and break a leg.

We're calling out all kinds of warnings and wild imprecations, but he's ignoring us entirely. Probably just staying focused on his present task.

He's now about 100 feet along the shoreline and pondering his next moves. We're beyond wading in and snatching him to safety now.

He's proving even more agile than we thought him. And fearless.

He could have got up the bank he's just blithely passed up, and is seeking still more challenges it seems.

Finally, about 220 feet along, he's wisely giving it up at that ancient stair to a long-forgotten dock. The rest of the property' shoreline is covered with dense and prickly vegetation.

He did give us a scare, once again, but we have to admire his fearless determination. Now he can go back to his morning nap.

Once our cat-provoked nerves have settled down a bit, we're pedaling onward down to Tomahawk Bay, and that's the little shrine (in shadows facing the bench) at the end of 'Katherine Point'.

It looks like the 'No Wake' buoys have already been removed from the entrance and exit to the passage round the point.

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Gary the DJ inhabits that house along the point in the spring and summers, and occupies some of his time placing little jokes, like skeletons on benches, tin wolves howling at the moon, alligators round the shrine, all round the property, though none of our photos do them any justice this time.

The house, which has evidently been here for many years.

The venerable boathouse, facing onto the bay, dates the property -- at a certain point, the authorities banned new boathouses looming out over the water, and their presence on some properties predates that ban. Since then, newer properties need to rely upon their docks and 'shore stations'.

From that boathouse, here's a view of the entrance to the canal 400 meters across the bay.

Rounding the point again, and . . .

. . . passing back by Gary's dock facing onto the main lake.

Some early morning event planning

They seem to be coming to some kind of agreement . . .

. . . but obviously we're not supposed to be listening in.

That's a far too hasty photo of an eagle flapping off from our shoreline near the point. Three more quick shots of him soaring out over the water missed him entirely. We'd surely like to know what he'd been doing there.

Oh man! Looks like a former gull met its end here. The fleeing eagle may even have had the poor carcass in his vicious claws.

It's all very sad -- 'Nature red in tooth and claw'!

Not to be disturbed, for any reason.

As we have to be leaving soon, it's time for some memento views of the scenery on the lake, 13 September 2026 . . .

. . . including one through the new wreckage in our shoreside shrubberies.

The communal dock seems not to have had much use this summer -- not so many years ago, it was frequently crowded by old and young, with several conversations in progress simultaneously.

In any case, it's very calm now, and watching clouds drift by overhead can be relaxing, at least for a little while.

Our friends Oscar and Cathy, and their various relatives, take turns throughout the summer over by that boathouse and dock nearby.

Amazing hidden symmetries in sky and lake

And a few hours later, on 13 September, here we are on what's likely our last trip under the highway bridge and across South Bay to the far cove. Just in case we can pedal up near any turtles unhibernated and still sun-basking with determination.

The swampy little mini-cove at the back of the cove that's at the back of South Bay, with no turtles, but a hint of the Bearskin Trail, the old railway right of way, just up behind.

One of Nature's genuine chaotic arrangements, but our little troop of basking turtles appears to have given it up for the year.

So we're leaving the cove and heading back to the highway bridge, for a half-hour+ pedal northward in time for our private Happy Hour.

This September the lake's alternating between uncommonly calm, mirror-like enjoyments and, virtually every other day, uncommonly active waves coming at us. This one, the next day, 14 September, is about halfway in between those extremes.

In this summer's bounty, we counted four or five extreme exercises, with waves from north or south higher than a foot or foot-and-a-half packed close up together. These are, indeed, great fun (as long as we don't let them turn our vehicle broadside, when it can become nearly impossible to get the bow into the wind again).

But at times of the most extreme bouncy-waviness, it's virtually unthinkable to wave an iPhone camera all round and keep one hand on the handlebars of one's fate.

But it really is such fun!

Seldom, however, do we have significant wave actions up here in the North Bay -- a north wind doesn't have time to get a real 'fetch' up to generate big waves farther down the lake, and a south wind usually gets somewhat stifled squeezing into the North Bay. So this is a mini-event, right here.

That, just by the way, is a Rhinelander 'Hodag', the city's ubiquitous logo-and-mascot. We've dropped in for the periodic maintenance of our so-called 'Toyota Crown Signia' -- very well done it was, too, and free on some kind of plan we agreed to.

Here's a fine specimen of a Rhinelander Hodag with our friend Dan Hinckley in 2022 (photo by Katie Hinckley).

Another mirror-lake day, 16 September 2026. It's so calm out here today that, after we hydrobike round the main island, we may just take the old canoe out for a seasonal jaunt. (We do that only once or twice a year.)

Back into the Frog Bay, first of all always, though the surface vegetation is already dying off.

Now we're turning round before we get beached in here.

That's the old tree that crashed down of its own volition overnight back in 2010 -- the vast woodpecker holes all through the tree trunk tell their own story of what finished it off.

Now up into the northwest cove. It's fun to take the canoe out once in a while, but not terribly convenient for people with significantly older joints.

The best part is the ability to float in over shallows that would grab hold of our bike propeller and perhaps never let it go. We'd have to call for help from the authorities.

More and more places not to walk round in without hipwaders on.

That's a no-nonsense drop in the water level, and, oops, we've just realized that we've scraped the bottom of the canoe into the mud. Maybe we can backpedal with the paddle without capsizing. More careful next time.

With his dependable patience, Melvin's been waiting for us to bring the canoe back, and he may be wondering why we're looking so muddily embarrassed at the moment.

We've taken the trouble to wash the old thing off a little bit, but haven't the energy now to try dragging it back onto the boathouse deck.

In any case, we may want to take it out again on one of our remaining days.

We didn't -- we dragged it back onto the deck a few days later. Every year it seems to get heavier.
(In fact, everything seems to get heavier.)

17 September 2026 -- we've been down to the South Shore Bay again and have then stopped for a hilarious chat with friend Gary on his daily late afternoon patrol of the shoreline, this week with friend Tammy,

Tonight, 18 September 2026, we're here at Bootleggers ('a fine dining restaurant'), on a central point of Lake Nokomis in Tomahawk, WI, 20 miles south of Lake Katherine. We've been here before, but it's looking even more welcoming now.

'Established in 1928 as a hideaway for a notorious Chicago bootlegger, Bootleggers now serves as a storied gathering place where the Gilded Age meets the rustic Wisconsin Northwoods.'

But what strikes a few of us, like brother-in-law Kirk, is the rotating array of intriguing B+W tableaux on several large screens all round the huge room.

Like this one, good grief.

Harking back to an earlier time (for some reason), we found them fascinating.

The rotation included 3 or 4 more, created (we were told) by an artist in California, perhaps specifically for Bootleggers.

And the next day, 19 September 2026, we're having a little rotation of our own on the trampoline, from which it's been impossible all summer to keep Kristin and George Michael away.

Kristin keeps working on demonstrating the famous Rump Squat, and little Buddy has perfected the drop but still needs a little more practice on the bouncing back up part.

By next summer, he should be at the semi-professional level.

Of course, even at his age, he's already skilled with a vast array of complicated toys, computer games, and TV shows like Peppa Pig.

Whilst his parents, Clinton and Emily, welcome Coraline, the newest member of their family.

Mr Mel's wandered down to our little hydrobike harbor to see us off on our daily expedition, this time . . .

. . . a more thorough photographic memento of Baby Leigh stranded in this mostly unwelcome (and hopefully temporary) drop in the lake level.

Baby Leigh (apparently named for some early member of lumber-sawmill family more than a century ago) is mounted on a reef all round it, yet the deepest part of the lake, at about 30 feet (according to Cousin Rob's Secchi dish*), lies only about 225m (740 ft) off that point in the last photo of this series.

(* and the DNR's 1973 bathymetric map)

This southwestern end of it, however, is only about 30m off the nearest shore, and here we're looking back into our so-called 'Sandy Beach Bay'.

And from this angle, we're looking past it towards the western shore near the Public Landing.

A neat little crescent shape -- the reef's frequently the nesting place for each year's family of loons, but they've been having sad results in recent years.

The family that's been claiming this lake since 2024 established their nest here again in 2026, but 'some kind of predator found the nest and destroyed the eggs' again. A group of volunteers from the Lake Katherine Association are working on building and placing an 'artificial nest island' in hopes that the pair will make use of it next year (from the Association's September 2026 newsletter).

'Till next year, Baby Leigh'

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: The end of summer on the lake, & the long road home