This trip has evolved over the years. Before I came into the picture my wonderful in-laws (D&D) had access to a summer residence cabin on the lake; it belonged to the parents of a sorority sister. The owners retired and started living at the cabin during the summer so D&D started renting a cabin at the resort. That was the “system” when we started coming up to the lake. We stayed in separate cabins and split who prepared dinners. We were on our own for breakfast and lunch.
A few years later the husband of the owning couple passed away, and while his widow still wanted to summer up here, she liked the idea of renting her cabin to D&D (and by extension us) at the beginning of the season. That gave her easy income for utilities and whatever and we were like extended family who would care for the cabin. We still split dinner duty and left breakfast and lunch up to the individual. Somewhere in the 90s my MIL started bringing up a portable stereo to play cassettes on for some music. The timing we worked out for the trips was that D&D went up first, then we would join them a few days later for several days together, then they went home and that gave us a few days with just our children. I treasure those trips for many reasons, one significant one was our children vacationing with their grandparents. We lived within an hour’s drive from each other and frequently got together, but time at the lake was special. Then owner’s family squabbles led the private cabin no longer being available so we returned to staying at the resort, still splitting dinner duty. Duty is such the wrong word since my MIL loved to cook, was an excellent cook, and my Sweetie and I love to cook.
My MIL passed away too soon in the early 2000s. We took it upon our selves to keep the lake tradition alive, making the trip with my FIL. We took care of all the food, and he brought the wine. As a long-time member of the Orange County Wine Society you can be assured that we had some outstanding wines on those trips. We bought a smallish TV and DVD player so we could watch movies in the evening. For one dinner we would drive into town and eat at what then was still a nice dinner house restaurant connected to an inn, as a treat from my FIL. Sadly, it has turned into a glorified café with poor service and mediocre food. We no longer care to eat there. We continued to take these trips with him until his health made it impossible for him to come up any more. He longed to return even though he was no capable of the trip. Just months before he passed, having not been out of his bed at all for over 2 years, he wanted us to book a trip and take him up. Dodging that subject was hard.
Even though he has passed, we have continued to come up to our equivalent of Snowangel’s Little Bit Of Heaven.
Since my Sweetie hardly drinks and I need to practice diabetic restraint in consumption, for this trip we opted for no wine, several choices of beer for me (a lot will come back home), some whiskies for me and couple of kinds of Hendricks gin for us.
Last year we were able to have our younger daughter and our two incredibly adorable grandchildren come up with us.
We’ll return in late summer with our 7 y/o grandson to give him another fishing trip and special time with us without his sister vying for attention. He’s a good eater so feeding him is easy. A nice thing about him being a good eater is that if he says he doesn't like something, it's a real dislike.
My Sweetie’s napping so I’ll grab a cigar and a beer and go outside and enjoy heaven from a front row seat.
Dinner tonight will be in town.
