Klamath Lake vacation

Last week I was at Klamath Lake for a few days with our family, where we had rented a house on the lake, had a wonderful time, saw some beautiful places, lots of birds, fished, swam, had no internet or television, but some spirited conversations about life-- not to mention good food and wine.

There are few things I value more than such times with our kids (both biological and by marriage) and grandkids. To see the cousins get this kind of time to play together, to know each other better, to hear them all laughing, well it's at the top of any list of mine and worth working to make it happen-- although usually it's not very expensive as we split the costs of the rentals and rarely eat meals out while on any of these outings.

When I am with the growing children for awhile, I am always amazed at the development of their personalities, their thinking. It's fun to watch them unfold as individuals. There are many examples but one such was a game of pretending to sell food to customers.

Now I had already had a turn at being the customer; so suggested our granddaughter (who turns 12 in September) should be. I rapidly found out what a boring customer I had been as she took on a personality of this extremely difficult woman with a hoity-toity accent who simply could not be pleased. Her cousins took it well, but her brother finally had had enough. He said nothing but after her next such put-down of the servers, with a big smile, simply dumped the pretend food (dry catkins from the pine tree) over her head. He made his point and showed he likely won't be a waiter ever.

In one area, our trip went not quite as we had planned. The first time Farm Boss and I tried to take out our canoe, I had my camera with me but no wet bag. The canoe was rocking and we just turned around as something was out of balance. It wasn't much fun for either of us, and I feared we'd go over or at the least not be able to move forward very well. Farm Boss figured out the problem, but other events got in the way of trying again; so that's for next trip there.

In the afternoons we started getting big thunderstorms which were exciting to watch. It's one thing I miss when not in Tucson for the monsoons. I was soaked several times while trying to get somewhere as the sky opened up while lightning was hitting across the lake (hopefully). Definitely exciting especially the afternoon when hail fell with a few nearly 1/2" in diameter. We watched in awe as the little balls struck the lake (photos of that in next blog). It was one of those things you are happy you got to see but equally glad to watch from under a roof.

The kids gathered bowls of the little balls and our son-in-law cut apart some of the largest so they could see the layers of how they had been made. The whole thing puts you in awe of the power of nature.

I kept waiting to see if I could get a photo of a lightning bolt until I got tired of sitting with the camera to my eye and hoping it would hit where it had the time before. I have heard you have to have a tripod and timed shot to really capture one. The bolts were straight down and thick as they would hit what looked like the opposite ridge or beyond.

After the storm, we saw damselflies on the surface of the lake, possibly their delicate wings damaged by the hail. Did some know to take shelter as there were also many dragonflies in the air seemingly undamaged by the storm. Was this just the end of their life cycle? Interestingly, although the little fish were swimming by in schools, the damselflies were not of interest to them to eat. Maybe too large? Beside the dying damselfly, you can see one of the slowly melting hail balls (the lake was cold this time).

More of Klamath Lake, dragonflies and Wood River in coming blogs.