Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Camping at Salamonie Lake


Everrett and Beverly invited us to come camping with them...and we did, August 6th through August 12th. To our pleasant surprise, they had platoon boat. They had reserved this site exactly 6 months earlier (February 6th at 12:01 am). All their attempts to reserve the site for July had failed because someone had always beat them.

Once we got there, we saw why. My...the site was large. Enough to hold a large RV, a tent, 2 cars, a boat trailer, and a car trailer, 2 picnic tables, 2 additional folding tables, fire place, ... and yet had enough space to play frisbe. Overlooking the site was the beautiful and serene Salamonie Lake. . Surrounding to the left and right were dense woods. Even though there may be campers there we did not see them easily.

Salamonie Lake was actually Salamonie river turned into a lake by building a dam for flood control of surrounding towns. Interestingly enough they evacuated 3 towns and flooded them (now buried by the lake).

Lizy had brought a friend, Brittany. I was so happy to see the girls lost in the joy of childhood. The girls built a teepee on the beach with water system coming to their teepee. As Tom and I were walking along the beach, he pointed out to me what the girls had built. I was impressed. They went bike riding often, and disappeared for hours probably to build their teepee. We all went boating and the girls were brave enough to be tubing. This is the first time I saw what tubing was; a person would hang on to a air tube and boat would pull them at the speed they indicated. Looked like a lot of fun.

There was an attempt to fish during the time when fish escaped to the bottom of the lake, away from the crowd and the warmth of the daytime sun. Well the girls had fun. While boating, we would stop somewhere so the girls can swim and play with Sammy. Our entertainment was watching them at play and we were busy enjoying each others' company. Sammy had his little dog life jacket. Oh so cute.

The first evening we grilled T bone and sirloin steaks. We had recently purchased a quarter of steer from our farmer friends, Keith and Lois. Oh they were so scrumptiously delicious. Another day we made fat hamburgers. It was again so delicious and felt so healthy. (Well we know that Keith and Lois steers graze the fields and are happy animals.)

In the evenings, always there was warm glow and crackling of campfire as we t
alked, roasted marshmallows, or just sat there emersed in peaceful summer evening overlooking the beautiful sunset over the waters. One evening, just after dinner we felt rain drops. Soon it became a down pour. We hurriedly cleared up everything and went into the cozy living room of the Cook's RV and watched John Adams, a miniseries that is absolutely thought provoking about the start of US. Even such evening was so memorable.

One week went too quickly. I was so happy to have found such a beautiful place not so far from Goshen.