Baptist Lake Trip 2019
2019-Aug-25, Sunday 21:18![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
I just got back from maybe the only vacation I've ever taken with the purposes of just relaxing. ![[twitter.com profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
lisekatevans invited me and some other friends up to her parents' lake house in Sand Lake, Michigan, for the weekend, so I took a half day on Friday, met her downtown at 1 p.m. with some other people, and we made our way up the interstate to our destination.
Normally I do an exhaustive account of everything I did when I take a trip like this, but almost everything we did on this trip comes under the heading of "relaxing," so I’m not going to do that. I’m going to do a photo essay instead.
Pictures below:
This was the view off the back porch of the lake house. It's on the east side of Baptist Lake, so there were spectacular views of the setting sun both nights we were there. Though it also meant the sunlight hit our eyes straight-on when we were sitting out there. We had most of our meals out on the porch, using the parasol on the table to keep the sun off as much as we could, looking out at the lake.
It was better in the mornings, with the sun behind the house, at least for meals. Though maybe that's just my dislike of sunshine talking. I had a great time sitting outside in the morning, when the house shaded the deck and I could drink tea in peace. Once the sun crept closer and the temperatures climbed 10°C higher in the sunshine, it was less hospitable.
I guess I could have gone down to the lower deck--the house had three floors, and this was on the ground floor as determined from the front door--but no one else even considered it, and I'd rather talk to people than sit in the shade.
We're on a boat!
This was one of the trip highlights.lisekatevans's parents have a lake house, so of course they have a boat to go with it. The lake wasn't particularly large, but it was big enough that a slow boat trip took us about ten minutes, and twice a day or more we'd get on the boat and go out on the lake. It was never very crowded and there were rules about how to sail (counterclockwise), so we could basically do what we wanted. There was even some talk of anchoring the boat near the middle of the lake and going swimming, but an earlier swimming trip ended that idea. The water was just cold enough that it was okay if you could go inside and towel off immediately, but out on the lake, even with towels, it might have been too much. lisekatevans ended up shivering like crazy after swimming and had to curl up under a blanket inside to get it under control.
Maybe it was the weather. Out in the sun during the day, it was hot enough that I ended up sweating while performing even minimal activity, like 25°C. At night, it dropped down to 11°C. So maybe going in the water and then not being in the sun triggered that too. I didn't go in the water, but the wind at night still got to me.
This was the view from the boat at sunset. The first day was by far the most spectacular, but it was purple and gold the second day too. It was my second-favorite view of the trip and what I took the most pictures of.
We get sunsets like this in Chicago too, but they're usually obscured by buildings. Here they were clearly visible across the lake each night and I drank them in like wine.
Breakfast the first day was a joint affair. Most of the cooking this weekend was done by![[facebook.com profile]](https://www.facebook.com/favicon.ico)
joseph.harnden and dgwernette, but almost everyone chipped in Saturday morning. This was the view when I woke up, after I went outside to say the Shema and then came back. The kitchen was already full up, so I drank ginger green tea and waited. We had breakfast inside on Saturday, I guess because luke.beasley.262 was still asleep so there were six chairs for six people.
I didn't complain, though. It reminded me of eating at my grandparents' house in Oregon. That's most of the reason I put jam on my bread, because "bread and jam" was one of my favorite foods at my grandparents' house and something I only ate at their house. I still don't eat it back home, even on the occasions that I have both bread and jam in my house. But here, with the grandma vibes I already had, well. I decided that it was the right time. I was right.
Scrambled eggs, sautéed spinach and onions, turkey sausage, and buttered and toasted bread with strawberry jam, with water and ginger green tea. Simple and delicious. We were going to make a similarly-elaborate dinner the first night, but we sat outside and had a bunch of snacks at about 6:30 p.m. and then went over to the fire pit the neighbors were holding, so no dinner was ever had. We stayed up late drinking, watched the stars, and went to bed pretty late.
I’m amazed that this breakfast was made at all, considering how hard we went the first night. But maybe it was determination to recover and not get wiped out for the rest of the weekend. If so, it worked.
This is the ground floor of the lake house. The house reminded me a lot of my grandparents' house in Oregon. Not the specifics, of course. They also had a combination living room/kitchen, but they certainly didn't have a well-stocked liquor cabinet. It was more the aura. The smell of the water outside, the sand by the side of the road, all the rooms with beds in them, the extremely-soft water, and the sense of relaxation. Every summer for years, I spent two weeks in the Oregon coast without a schedule, just eating, sleeping, reading, and occasionally taking a trip to the water. Our schedule on this trip was pretty similar. I even spent an hour outside, reading シカゴの夏は短すぎ while some of the others napped, which reminded me a lot of all the reading I did as a child in Oregon.
I mean, other than me reading in Japanese this time.
On Saturday morning I went for a walk down to the public beach on Baptist Lake because it was the only place nearby with a Pokémon gym. Once I got there and dealt with the lack of signal and the GPS confusion, I decided to walk all the way around the lake for the experience. About half of it was a path along the lake, past all the lake houses which I didn't take any pictures of both because it would have been rude and because I didn't care that much, and half of it was along rural roads next to cornfields or copses of trees.
Almost all the way back to the lake house, I found a forest path and, tired of walking in the sun, I immediately took it. This sign was at the far end of the path, and as soon as I saw it I thought, "Don't mind if I do!"
There weren't any official paths through the forest, but there were clearly-deliniated places where people frequently walked. My first time through the forest I stuck to a single one of those paths, but my second time through I went wandering and got lost for a while. There's a Japanese word, 森林浴 shinrinyoku, that's pretty popular on the internet. It means "forest bathing," and while it was originally a marketing campaign from the Ministry of Agriculture, there are plenty of studies about the benefits of spending time in nature. I tend to be a city person nowadays, but I forget how much I love walking in nature, and especially in forests.
I went for a walk along the beach today when I got back into the city, but it wasn't the same.
I took another walk later in the day, this time entering from the "Trespassing!" side, and got lost in the forest for a while. I passed moss-covered stumps, fallen trees, heard a woodpecker from somewhere in the distance, and found this small forest pond. I thought about getting closer to take a better picture, but I decided against it. I've tried to approach forest ponds before and found that the water extended much farther than it seemed from a casual viewing, and my boots are pretty clean right now. I could get plenty close to the moss-covered stumps, and moss is one of my favorite things in nature.
joseph.harnden doing the grilling here for Saturday's dinner. We were originally going to have salmon on Friday night, but all the drinks and snacks displaced it completely, so we had it on Saturday. This time joseph.harnden and dgwernette did basically everything, though I helped lisekatevans do some vegetable chopping to allow them to do their work unhindered.
One of the many tasks we did to prep the house was buying more propane for the grill. And then we used it for this and for breakfast the following day, and it'll be ready for the next time anyone comes there, so we're paying it forward. And by "we" I mean "other people." I did almost nothing homelike this weekend.
Visible on the right is the wine glass, becausejoseph.harnden insisted that one cannot grill without alcohol.
Grilled salmon with soy-honey glaze, grilled asparagus, peasant bread, pine nut hummus, and chopped peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers. The salmon was my idea, but just the basic concept of "Hey, let's grill some salmon."joseph.harnden and dgwernette took over everything else after that and came up with a feast. The skin was crispy--almost no one else wanted it, so they gave it all to me--and the fish was tender, the hummus and bread went perfectly together, and it was just the right time of day (as you can probably tell from the shadows).
There was barely any food left when we were done because people kept going back for extra helpings. I didn't personally go back for extra helpings, but I certainly took some of the food from other people's second helpings when it turned out that they had bitten off more than they could chew. Literally.
It's me! This happened as part of a spate of selfies that basically everyone on the boat took at the same time, with the sunset behind us. I don't tend to like pictures of myself where I’m smiling (something relatively common in men, I think), but this one is pretty nice.
I had to do a lot of fiddling to make sure I was visible and the sky wasn't washed out and this is the result. I kind of wish I had tried the previous night, when the sky was purple. But maybe the colors wouldn't have shown up.
A candid photo of the front of the boat! I have a bad habit of forgetting to take photos of the people I’m with when I’m doing something, so I tried to make more of an effort this time. But I still wasn't super comfortable asking people to pose for photos, so a lot of my photos are like this. I'll work on that.
joseph.harnden is on his phone because while most of of Baptist Lake has very little reception, there was one particular spot on the lake where we got three bars of LTE. Everywhere else, we were lucky if we got reception at all, and if we did, it was generally 4G. I'm not sure what was up with those few square meters.
lisekatevans kept this secret from me until the night before, when she left it slip when we were at the neighbors' fire pit, but she asked joseph.harnden and dgwernette to make me a birthday cheesecake! They made a simple one with blueberry compote, and when we got back from the boat ride they put a candle on it, sang Happy Birthday to You to me, and then we all ate delicious cheesecake.
I was so touched. I rememberschoolpsychnerd once asked me if I would ever want a surprise birthday party and I said no. I feel like maybe I was wrong? Or maybe I was accurately answering then but it's not true anymore? I’m not sure I'd want people jumping out and shouting "surprise!" at me, but that cheesecake was amazing.
I don't have a picture of it for obvious reasons, but both nights I was there I went out on the dock and looked up at the stars. The first night I was out there withlisekatevans, luke.beasley.262, and one other person, but the second night I was out there alone after almost everyone had gone to sleep. I listened to Diamond Sky by Elliot Berger on low volume, lay on my back on the dock, and tried to absorb as much of the night sky as I could. The city has trees, and it has sunrises and sunsets, and the architecture seen in the glow of the streetlights is beautiful, but it doesn't have a view of the stars. As I picked out the constellations and watched the sparkling dust of the Milky Way (Japanese: 天の川 ama no gawa, "The River of Heaven"), tears came to my eyes. I honestly wasn't expecting that.
I saw a shooting star both nights, and so had the chance to say the blessing for doing so: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יי אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם עֹשֶׂה מַעֲשֶׂה בְרֵאשִׁית Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech haolam, oseh ma'aseh bereshit, "Blessed are You, '' our G‑d, King of the Universe, who makes the work of Creation."
Skirt steak in a honey glaze, eggs, sautéed spinach and onions, homemade salsa, and sliced avocados.
Originally we were going to have salmon for dinner one night and skirt steak the next night, but since we didn't actually have a formal dinner on Friday we had an extra dinner meat leftover. It waslisekatevans's idea to have steak and eggs, and once she suggested it joseph.harnden and dgwernette took over and got to work the next morning. When I woke up they were almost done with everything, and after I said the morning Shema, I came back and poured myself a cup of tea while joseph.harnden chopped the skirt steak into thin strips and dgwernette scrambled the eggs, and then we took the food out onto the deck and ate it while the lake glittered and the house shaded us from the sun.
I love steak and eggs, though I never make it for myself--my breakfast is almost always miso soup, salted salmon, pickles, rice, and tea--but this was the first time thatlisekatevans and luke.beasley.262 had ever had it before. And honestly, this was a great introduction. The steak was tender and the homemade salsa went perfectly with both the steak and the eggs. All of the food this weekend was delicious, but this might have been my favorite meal.
Cleanup time! This is one of the few photos where I actually took the initiative and asked people to smile during it.
joseph.harnden and dgwernette had to leave to make it back to Chicago in time for a White Sox game, but I can't blame them for skipping out on the cleaning. They did almost all of the cooking today and the previous night, and they had something important to attend. And the food they made was delicious.
I barely did anything in the kitchen other than eat, and now I feel a little bad about it. It still all got done, but...
This is not a particularly good photo, but I tried a few times and I couldn't get it to come out any better. The neighbors were talking about how Baptist Lake was one of the cleanest lakes in the country. I don't know if that's actually true or not, but it was certainly clear. The water here was six feet deep or so and the bottom was still clearly visible, and it wasn't until we got further out that we stopped being able to see the bottom at all. That's nothing like Lake Michigan, where the bottom vanishes almost immediately.
It was an extremely cloudy day, which looked great, but made it much harder to take a clear photo of the water with my generic iPhone camera.
Props to our captain, who doesn't have an easy internet presence I can use as a reference.
We went on one last boat ride before going back to the city--thoughlisekatevans remained behind for one more day--and we took three slow circuits around the lake. That was one or two too many for my skin, and I finally ended up with a sunburn even though it was extremely cloudly. My arms are a bit pink now, and a little tender to the touch. Maybe I should have asked them to put up the sunshade like we did during the previous afternoon's ride, but what's done is done. Other than that, the weather was perfect. Clouds covering the sun so it wasn't blinding and reflecting in the lake, warm but not too hot with a cool wind, and no rain.
We brought along a bunch of card and board games, and none of them ever got used. Basically any time we had free time and there weren't people asleep or doing something important, we all piled into the boat and went out on the lake.
The whole trip was lovely.
I'm so glad that lisekatevans organized it and invited me! I wasn't as excited about it as I might have been, because I had other things on my mind last week, but I was definitely able to relax and enjoy it during the time I was there.
I have another house retreat later this year, but we'll see if I post one of these for that. I've heard it's under strict seal of secrecy, so only hints and rumors may reach the outside world.
Iflisekatevans organizes another trip, I'll gladly go. I had such a wonderful weekend.
Normally I do an exhaustive account of everything I did when I take a trip like this, but almost everything we did on this trip comes under the heading of "relaxing," so I’m not going to do that. I’m going to do a photo essay instead.
Pictures below:
This was the view off the back porch of the lake house. It's on the east side of Baptist Lake, so there were spectacular views of the setting sun both nights we were there. Though it also meant the sunlight hit our eyes straight-on when we were sitting out there. We had most of our meals out on the porch, using the parasol on the table to keep the sun off as much as we could, looking out at the lake.
It was better in the mornings, with the sun behind the house, at least for meals. Though maybe that's just my dislike of sunshine talking. I had a great time sitting outside in the morning, when the house shaded the deck and I could drink tea in peace. Once the sun crept closer and the temperatures climbed 10°C higher in the sunshine, it was less hospitable.
I guess I could have gone down to the lower deck--the house had three floors, and this was on the ground floor as determined from the front door--but no one else even considered it, and I'd rather talk to people than sit in the shade.
We're on a boat!
This was one of the trip highlights.
Maybe it was the weather. Out in the sun during the day, it was hot enough that I ended up sweating while performing even minimal activity, like 25°C. At night, it dropped down to 11°C. So maybe going in the water and then not being in the sun triggered that too. I didn't go in the water, but the wind at night still got to me.
This was the view from the boat at sunset. The first day was by far the most spectacular, but it was purple and gold the second day too. It was my second-favorite view of the trip and what I took the most pictures of.
We get sunsets like this in Chicago too, but they're usually obscured by buildings. Here they were clearly visible across the lake each night and I drank them in like wine.
Breakfast the first day was a joint affair. Most of the cooking this weekend was done by
I didn't complain, though. It reminded me of eating at my grandparents' house in Oregon. That's most of the reason I put jam on my bread, because "bread and jam" was one of my favorite foods at my grandparents' house and something I only ate at their house. I still don't eat it back home, even on the occasions that I have both bread and jam in my house. But here, with the grandma vibes I already had, well. I decided that it was the right time. I was right.
Scrambled eggs, sautéed spinach and onions, turkey sausage, and buttered and toasted bread with strawberry jam, with water and ginger green tea. Simple and delicious. We were going to make a similarly-elaborate dinner the first night, but we sat outside and had a bunch of snacks at about 6:30 p.m. and then went over to the fire pit the neighbors were holding, so no dinner was ever had. We stayed up late drinking, watched the stars, and went to bed pretty late.
I’m amazed that this breakfast was made at all, considering how hard we went the first night. But maybe it was determination to recover and not get wiped out for the rest of the weekend. If so, it worked.
This is the ground floor of the lake house. The house reminded me a lot of my grandparents' house in Oregon. Not the specifics, of course. They also had a combination living room/kitchen, but they certainly didn't have a well-stocked liquor cabinet. It was more the aura. The smell of the water outside, the sand by the side of the road, all the rooms with beds in them, the extremely-soft water, and the sense of relaxation. Every summer for years, I spent two weeks in the Oregon coast without a schedule, just eating, sleeping, reading, and occasionally taking a trip to the water. Our schedule on this trip was pretty similar. I even spent an hour outside, reading シカゴの夏は短すぎ while some of the others napped, which reminded me a lot of all the reading I did as a child in Oregon.
I mean, other than me reading in Japanese this time.
On Saturday morning I went for a walk down to the public beach on Baptist Lake because it was the only place nearby with a Pokémon gym. Once I got there and dealt with the lack of signal and the GPS confusion, I decided to walk all the way around the lake for the experience. About half of it was a path along the lake, past all the lake houses which I didn't take any pictures of both because it would have been rude and because I didn't care that much, and half of it was along rural roads next to cornfields or copses of trees.
Almost all the way back to the lake house, I found a forest path and, tired of walking in the sun, I immediately took it. This sign was at the far end of the path, and as soon as I saw it I thought, "Don't mind if I do!"
There weren't any official paths through the forest, but there were clearly-deliniated places where people frequently walked. My first time through the forest I stuck to a single one of those paths, but my second time through I went wandering and got lost for a while. There's a Japanese word, 森林浴 shinrinyoku, that's pretty popular on the internet. It means "forest bathing," and while it was originally a marketing campaign from the Ministry of Agriculture, there are plenty of studies about the benefits of spending time in nature. I tend to be a city person nowadays, but I forget how much I love walking in nature, and especially in forests.
I went for a walk along the beach today when I got back into the city, but it wasn't the same.
I took another walk later in the day, this time entering from the "Trespassing!" side, and got lost in the forest for a while. I passed moss-covered stumps, fallen trees, heard a woodpecker from somewhere in the distance, and found this small forest pond. I thought about getting closer to take a better picture, but I decided against it. I've tried to approach forest ponds before and found that the water extended much farther than it seemed from a casual viewing, and my boots are pretty clean right now. I could get plenty close to the moss-covered stumps, and moss is one of my favorite things in nature.
One of the many tasks we did to prep the house was buying more propane for the grill. And then we used it for this and for breakfast the following day, and it'll be ready for the next time anyone comes there, so we're paying it forward. And by "we" I mean "other people." I did almost nothing homelike this weekend.
Visible on the right is the wine glass, because
Grilled salmon with soy-honey glaze, grilled asparagus, peasant bread, pine nut hummus, and chopped peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers. The salmon was my idea, but just the basic concept of "Hey, let's grill some salmon."
There was barely any food left when we were done because people kept going back for extra helpings. I didn't personally go back for extra helpings, but I certainly took some of the food from other people's second helpings when it turned out that they had bitten off more than they could chew. Literally.
It's me! This happened as part of a spate of selfies that basically everyone on the boat took at the same time, with the sunset behind us. I don't tend to like pictures of myself where I’m smiling (something relatively common in men, I think), but this one is pretty nice.
I had to do a lot of fiddling to make sure I was visible and the sky wasn't washed out and this is the result. I kind of wish I had tried the previous night, when the sky was purple. But maybe the colors wouldn't have shown up.
A candid photo of the front of the boat! I have a bad habit of forgetting to take photos of the people I’m with when I’m doing something, so I tried to make more of an effort this time. But I still wasn't super comfortable asking people to pose for photos, so a lot of my photos are like this. I'll work on that.
I was so touched. I remember
schoolpsychnerd once asked me if I would ever want a surprise birthday party and I said no. I feel like maybe I was wrong? Or maybe I was accurately answering then but it's not true anymore? I’m not sure I'd want people jumping out and shouting "surprise!" at me, but that cheesecake was amazing. ✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨
I don't have a picture of it for obvious reasons, but both nights I was there I went out on the dock and looked up at the stars. The first night I was out there with
I saw a shooting star both nights, and so had the chance to say the blessing for doing so: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יי אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם עֹשֶׂה מַעֲשֶׂה בְרֵאשִׁית Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech haolam, oseh ma'aseh bereshit, "Blessed are You, '' our G‑d, King of the Universe, who makes the work of Creation."
✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨
Skirt steak in a honey glaze, eggs, sautéed spinach and onions, homemade salsa, and sliced avocados.
Originally we were going to have salmon for dinner one night and skirt steak the next night, but since we didn't actually have a formal dinner on Friday we had an extra dinner meat leftover. It was
I love steak and eggs, though I never make it for myself--my breakfast is almost always miso soup, salted salmon, pickles, rice, and tea--but this was the first time that
Cleanup time! This is one of the few photos where I actually took the initiative and asked people to smile during it.
I barely did anything in the kitchen other than eat, and now I feel a little bad about it. It still all got done, but...
This is not a particularly good photo, but I tried a few times and I couldn't get it to come out any better. The neighbors were talking about how Baptist Lake was one of the cleanest lakes in the country. I don't know if that's actually true or not, but it was certainly clear. The water here was six feet deep or so and the bottom was still clearly visible, and it wasn't until we got further out that we stopped being able to see the bottom at all. That's nothing like Lake Michigan, where the bottom vanishes almost immediately.
It was an extremely cloudy day, which looked great, but made it much harder to take a clear photo of the water with my generic iPhone camera.
Props to our captain, who doesn't have an easy internet presence I can use as a reference.
We went on one last boat ride before going back to the city--though
We brought along a bunch of card and board games, and none of them ever got used. Basically any time we had free time and there weren't people asleep or doing something important, we all piled into the boat and went out on the lake.
The whole trip was lovely.
I'm so glad that I have another house retreat later this year, but we'll see if I post one of these for that. I've heard it's under strict seal of secrecy, so only hints and rumors may reach the outside world.
If
no subject
Date: 2019-Aug-26, Monday 02:57 (UTC)Side note... even though you did a photo essay... this nonetheless seems to be an "exhaustive account of everything." 😄
no subject
Date: 2019-Aug-26, Monday 14:15 (UTC)It's easy for me to look at this and see everything I left out--most of what happened around the fire pit, lighting Shabbat candles, the dream that
no subject
Date: 2019-Aug-26, Monday 03:09 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-Aug-26, Monday 14:20 (UTC)It's technically for anything that reminds us of the work G-d did in creating the world, so the same blessing applies on viewing seas, mountains, rivers, and hills (for the first time in 30 days), lighting during a storm, and shooting stars.
no subject
Date: 2019-Aug-28, Wednesday 13:34 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-Aug-26, Monday 22:04 (UTC)That's funny about the jam and toast. As a child I also only ate jam and toast with my grandparents. I loved it, but only ever ate it there! I think of it every time I eat it now. I had one weekend where I was allowed to stay there and none of my siblings came, and it was the first time I ever had had jam and toast, and then I just kept it up! It's very interesting that you also have that nostalgic reaction!
no subject
Date: 2019-Aug-27, Tuesday 17:57 (UTC)What kind of bread did you eat it on? For me, it was always sourdough, and my grandparents' house is almost the only place I ever ate sourdough.
no subject
Date: 2019-Aug-29, Thursday 14:53 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-Aug-28, Wednesday 13:33 (UTC)I haven’t caught one myself yet, though there was some faint purple in the sunrise this morning which I’m going to apply some wishful thinking to. Quite delighted to see yours! Thank you for sharing volcano sky adventures!
no subject
Date: 2019-Aug-29, Thursday 14:37 (UTC)Now I wish I had captured the colors better, especially since you referenced my photo elsewhere.
no subject
Date: 2019-Aug-29, Thursday 21:45 (UTC)Er, sorry, my enthusiasm for the ash-glow skies might have run away with me a bit. I would be happy to take the link down if you (quite sensibly) don't feel like random people wandering onto your not-actually-about-volcanoes-at-all post.
no subject
Date: 2019-Aug-29, Thursday 21:54 (UTC)