Busy day.. I’ll talk about tonight tomorrow in the interest of time.. I need to get some sleep tonight. Lemme see.. where did I leave off yesterday ? Oh yeah.. we were gathering at my folks cabin for my father’s famous ‘bachelor’s spaghetti’ . It’s a family ritual whenever we get together. It’s so cute watching my dad cook

One of his secrets is to through the spagetti at the fridge to see if it’s ready to eat. If it sticks.. it’s done…

Looks like it needs a few more minutes.

Billy and Max provided the music while we prepped dinner.. This is Billy’s new carbon fiber guitar.. it’s waterproof !

We all sat outside to eat… either on the deck..

.. or more civilized.

Afterwards we all sat and watched the “shout it Out” movie that max was in. It was very cool watching it again and letting the relatives see it. Max looks good in there.

We closed the night by taking the potato gun down to the beach and and attaching some puffed out steel wool to the potatoes before firing. it’s a very, very cool effect.as the steel wool burns behind the launched spud. . a little dangerous but cool

This morning Diane and I took a walk through the trails on the resort… It’s very pretty where the Poplar river hits the lake.. You can see an old generator house.

We saw (and ate) tons of raspberries

Man.. they are delicious !

Soon after we got home from that walk Brother in law John came buy and asked if i was up for a rub.. We ran the 3.5 mile trail that we did a frew days ago while Diane walked it briskly. I was a great run.. and fun to get out with Jon and Diane .

Once we were home freom that, Dinae started packing up the SamStones we made here.. we need to ship them back to Jen for fireing..

By about 1, all the kids were awake . Our plan today was to go to the Alpine slide on Lutsen Moutnain and take the gondola to the resturant on top.. DMy mom and the billy’s kids went ahead of us. I got there in time to see my mom finish her first run

The ride closed for a bit just as we got there.. so we milled aroud the store a bit.. max tried on some new fashion..

Gabe is always styling..

We decided to go up the gondola’s first.. there were 4 to a car..

The guy who was loading the cars was pretty funny. he kept trying to get in our pictures..

The ride up was very peaceful.. e had fun by making funny noises when we passed the other cars goign the opposite direction..

Betsy and Berto went up with Diane and me.

The view a the top was nice.. and just like any other point around here.. lots of trees.. not many mountains. and thie realllllly big lake.

They had a nice resturant up there.. real food, and a cool water wall fountain.

Whihc now has a SamStone in it.

Everyone got a bite to eat at the resturant..

They didn’ thave anything Vegan.. bt they gave me a big tray of pickles for free.. they were yummy !

Chris checked out the surroundings while we ate.

Then came a tough and important moment. We decided since we were all together up thererthat it would be a good time to take a picture… something we haven’t done since Sam’s passing.. I’d been thinking of this moment since we started planning the trip.. We got everyone together then asked a nice man passing buy t snap a shot with each of our 6 cameras.. I noticed half way through that little billy was holding a SamStone. Man.. I could feel Sam so there and so not there.. I really got chocked up

I as so choked up that i went away a bit to be by myself. little Ellery came over and asked ‘what are you doing ‘? I told here was crying because I missed Sam so much . She thought about it a little then said Sam is in our hearts.. it was cute and touching..

Then it was tiem to head back down the hill.. we loaded back into the gondolas and headed back down.

Diane got this shot of Billy and me in the gondola car.

We got to the bottom then headed straight over to the Alpine slide.. up we went again.. Max and Gabe were ahead of Billy and me,

Here’s Billy ready to go..

Down I went.. it as a hoot !.. assoon as I got down, we baught another round of tickerts and went up for another ride. There go Billy and Ben below us..

Betsy and Diane were in front.

On their cars and ready to go !

..

Time to head home.. look how betsy towers over Diane and my mom.

The final project of the day was to finish the new invention.. the ‘Fish and Chips 5000 Fishing Cannon. ” The idea was to mount a fisnhing reel on a spud cannon.. then use a launced potato to carry a fishing lure way out into the ater. Last night Max worked to attach the fishing point ferrules and reel to the spud gun..

Then he added the all important logo !

Here’s the finished weapon.

This afternoon we did the real testing (no pun intended)

We went down to a deserted part of the lakeshore..

The first shot worked p-e-r-f-e-c-t-l-y !

Here’s an action shot of Max firing

And here’s gabe taking a shot

We eventually lost the lure and that was it for our first test.. The design worked perfectly.. A pretty fun idea.. no ?

Last job at the beach was for Max to clean the fish he caught the other day..

We talked bout respecting the fish who gaves it’s lfe for our food.. Max put the fishes head and tail on a little barge decorated with flowers and launched it into the lake.. It was cool and wierd… and nice.

This eveing we had a nice dinenr with everyone to do a late celibration of my folks 50th anniversary.. . It was a wonderful and sad evening. I’ll write about that tomorrow. Right now.. i’m going to go outand look for moremetoirs.. remember the Persied meteor showerr beaaks ealry next week !

Happy meteor hunting folks.. Sam.. send us some shooting stars. We love you !
-me