A Fantastic Birthday

September 9th (Wednesday)

Our first day off after our 8-day shift, and it was also my birthday.  I enjoyed what felt like a nice long sleep-in as compared to getting up at 05:45 for work, and then Jason gave me my birthday presents and made me a delicious brunch of blueberry pancakes, bacon, and sausages.  Then we were off to the lake. 

It was a beautiful, sunny day and glassy calm as we planed our way along the lake.  We went down to the south end to check it out and explore, as we had never been down to that end before.  

As the sun got hotter we wanted to enjoy it, and to go swimming, so we headed to our perfect picnic and swimming area of Triple Falls.  There we enjoyed a fantastic afternoon of relaxing and swimming.  The water felt quite a bit cooler than it had the last time that we were there, so our refreshing swims were brief.

One time, as I was coming out of the water, I saw a bumblebee struggling on the surface.  I scooped him up with a leaf and put him down on the shore at the head of our beach blanket.  I lay down and we watched as he used his legs to preen himself as he dried in the sun.  It was not long before he took off and flew away.  About five minutes later a bumblebee came flying erratically towards us and landed beside my arm.  I let it climb up on my arm and all of the way to the tip of my thumb, and I held it up high so that it could get a good take off.  Unfortunately, when it took off, it fell quickly to the ground and I noticed that one of its wings was folded wrong.  It ran, faster than I had ever seen a bumblebee run before.  It ran across the uneven, small rocky ground until it found a small stick.  It pushed itself under the stick, but the stick simply rolled off of its back, so it carried on.  Soon it came to a leaf that was lying on the ground curled upward.  The bee climbed into the leaf and then proceeded to walk up onto one of the edges so as to tip the leaf over.  Once the leaf was sitting so that it created a shelter, the bumblebee climbed inside and settled down.  I thought it was fascinating that the bumblebee appeared to know that not only was it injured, but also that it was in danger on the open ground because it was flightless.  It seemed to know that it had to find cover to survive.  The bumblebee hung out in its shelter for close to fifteen minutes, and then it was gone.  I imagined that it was able to fix its wing and finally fly away.  Pretty neat to get to see that on my Birthday!

As the afternoon progressed and the sun started to go behind the mountain we headed down to the North end of the lake to do some exploring of the “stump patch” area; it is a large area of flooded trees that remain standing, sticking out of the water, almost fully submerged.  I know I have mentioned before that Link Lake is quite long, but I may never have given a distance.  It is about 15 nautical miles long – that is about 28kms.  

In the evening we went back to Triple Falls where we met up with Ken and Shelly.  They had come out for my birthday and Shelly had prepared a lovely dinner of deer-meat kabobs, which we cooked over the fire, and potatoes, mushrooms and onions cooked over the fire, Caesar salad, and garlic toast.  For dessert Shelly had even prepared a cake and brought candles.  It was very sweet of them, and a lovely way to wrap up a fantastic birthday.

Playing with the panorama feature of the camera.