Labor Day Week-end

We used the camper for the first time this past week-end. We camped at my sister's property in Olivet. I know that sounds a little strange, but it is about 12 acres back off the road, they have built a pavilion, and although you can see a couple of back yards it feels more isolated.

This is a panoramic view of the campers taken from the hill near the pavilion

We saw several deer and 3 or 4 wild turkeys, although no rabbits or raccoons.
They have a pond with lots of little blue gill and bass, and some that are getting to be decent size. We even saw a blue heron fly into the pond, but it didn't stay more than a few seconds, too many dogs and kids.

Friday and Saturday was just family, including some of the dogs. My great nephew will be 11 months old next week and is toddling around and has a fascination for anything on wheels that makes noise. He particular likes tires, and they have to watch him like a hawk, because as most babies, he wants to see what they taste like.

My brother brought his dog Otis, who is about 14 years old and has arthritis in his hips and cannot hear very well. One day I watched him take a few steps, stop and do this have crouch lunge thing for a second or two, take a couple more steps and lunge again. I made the comment that it looked like he was doing exercises. (see the picture to the right).

Every camping trip or family vacation has to have something special to remember, this one was no exception. Sunday night, a lot of friends and extended family came for dinner. there was probably 30 people. There were a lot of people there who were dog people so they petted and played with both his dog and ours.

At some point in the afternoon Otis came up missing and without a huge announcement half of the people were looking for the dog. In the pond, in the "tall weed" in the briars, in the woods, and down the road. For about 15 minutes.

Then somebody notices that my brother-in-law's propane camp stove is in flames. He had left it on to burn off some of the grease and in the process of looking for the dog, forgot about it and the grease caught fire.

About 8 of us were trying to decided how to put out the fire before it burnt the pavilion down. We did get it turned off, but the grease was still burning. I had said don't use water it will just make the grease fire worse, they didn't listen, flames shot to within inches of the rafters. Somebody tried opening the lid that gave it more oxygen, same effect. They tried beating with a dry towel (yeah like that's going to work). My niece got a fire extinguisher from a camper, (out of date and no pressure) finally Charlie yelled but a wet towel over it. duh!!!! Sorry, don't have any pictures of the fire. (sorry no picture of the fire we were too busy trying to put it out)

OK, back to looking for the dog. Which we found about 20 yards from the campfire ring, lying in the weeds in the shade of a big tree. See the large tree behind
Charlie to the left of where he is setting, that's about where we found Otis.

Like I said every trip has to have something to remember.