A long drive on July Five

With the fourth of July being yesterday we did all of the American things that are supposed to be done; we grilled out with friends and walked down to watch the fireworks over the river. As is often the case with young kids they fall asleep just as the fireworks are starting. With the first flares sent up I felt the Sophia lose her battle to the sandman and the dead weight of her body replacing the conscious heft that was there only moments before. When she awoke this morning she had to ask if I had carried her to bed, as she had no memory of the holiday light show. Merrick was in the same position, although did not seem to be nearly as concerned with how he made it to bed.
The Fifth of July was another day, a beautiful low eighties, low humidity day and on a whim we made a long drive south to the our old stomping grounds of Port Washington. We spent some time fishing on the pier. Between the clarity of the water (thank you zebra mussels) and only a light breeze you could see down to depths of over twenty feet. This allowed us to watch some massive carp cruise by as well as about 15 - 20 nice sized lake trout. Alas, nothing was biting. Merrick is still on bobber restrictions, but Sophia has moved up to an open bail. The closed face reel I bought her was a quality name but now appears to be made in China--in short it is junk which is why she was using my open face--She did well enough with it that I think I will pick her up one of her own. We were able to watch several others clean fish at the public cleaning station although both kids thought that the smell could use some improvements and then grabbed a couple of sandwhiches and headed a couple minutes north to Harrington Beach State park. This is a beautiful State park with great hiking trails of which Lisa and I have traversed all of them several times. Our intentions were to do a little hiking, some possible geocaching and then a little time on the beach. As it turned out we only hit the beach. The kids swim alot, although they have never really swam at a beach and Merrick was beside himself with joy and appearance of so much sand. The water was typical temperatures (low to mid 60s) but we waded around and made several sand castles and in general just enjoyed the beauty that is Lake Michigan. The kids made use of thier reptilian brain to make sand angels in the body warming sand, this of course lead to sand everwhere and as Merrick kept saying "I got sand on my junk"