Dwight Peck's personal website
Summer 2025
A photographic record of whatever leapt out at us
You may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.
Lacustrine odds and ends and a hike on the Pottawattomie Kettle Trail, but first, an Out-of Sequence Bonus
This page's modest contributions run from 15 to 22 June, but with these first two we must just leap ahead.

Here are five loons relaxing just in front of Kristin's cottage at 7 a.m. on 7 July 2025, taken by the gifted photographer Tommy Burrell from just across the lake.

And here's one of them on a very loonlike takeoff.
We did learn that, unfortunately, this year's loon chicks did not make it.
Now, back to mid-June, for some Lacustrine Odds and Ends

The cats are allowed out at about 9 a.m. and can be really bothersome until that time, but once out, it takes them a while to decide what they want to do.

Melvin will soon realize that there isn't room for both of them.

A little trip south into our own little Tomahawk Bay, with an obviously grandfathered vintage boathouse and an inflatable duck to keep the real-life birds off the dock.

Of the three cottages on this bay (in this case a fairly palatial cottage), here we find a 500 horsepower outboard motor on the pontoon boat. Kristin's family has a 25 horsepower on their pontoon boat, and there's never been a felt need for anything more powerful. Perhaps it's just a prestige thing.

A new tree fatality. On this lake, either for reasons of law or just of tradition, most trees that fold over and sploosh into the lake are just left there, as is. (Unless they're blocking somebody's dock, etc.)

This arrangement on the northern end of Tomahawk Bay we've always referred to as 'The Condo', annually renewable burrows for creatures of some denomination.

A cute little mallard who's wandered off from his party

That's the canal over to the next, much bigger, lake -- it's becoming more and more impenetable every year for anything with propellers. Canoers and kayakers are welcome if they're very very careful.

In the recent past, we've come through the first part of the canal to the midlake, but been stymied by all the fallen detritus in the second part. Last summer, I was just able to blast a desperate way through in the last days of our visit here, but it was extremely awkward work and not entirely safe.
We'll return soon for a proper reconnaissance and, if appropriate, a further return bearing some kind of rudimentary tools. Cousin Rob would be so proud.
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Oh, sorry. One does hate disturbing the local wildlife.

Here, on the southern side of Tomahawk Bay, there is some sort of overgrown creek through the marsh, visible on Google Maps, leading to another pond about 200 meters back into the wilderness. Cousin Rob lived here all his life and remembers when, way way back, it was navigable, and we always sort-of-intended to have a go at it ourselves. Not on hydrobikes, of course, but in a canoe or kayak.

There's the mouth of it, just left of centre. A few years ago we met two women paddling back out, who informed us that it was impossible to get through.

That's the entrance. It was clear that, in Cousin Rob's condition two years ago, if he were ever going to get this done, it had to be soon, and so Tracy Hames, the Executive Director of the Wisconsin Wetlands Association, came up from Madison to give him a hand.
And, on 8 September 2023, Rob made it through the channel at last.

Coming back up to the North Bay

A birthday dinner for Kristin in the main house, featuring Young George (aka 'Buddy'), who likes to sit up on the moose and then tilt off it onto the floor.

He also plays the faux-guitar with Uncle Kirk

The Siblings, nicely turned out for Kristin's birthday

The Franken-Eric will not frighten Young George.

After the birthday dinner, we notice a boat becalmed out on the lake . . .

. . . and soon receive a phone call from Kim and Janet, who are becalmed out on the lake, on their way to Janet's cottage after our birthday festivities.

To the rescue

Kristin's brother hands over a tow rope, and the pontoon boat gets down to work. Four km down the lake, four km back again.

Young George loves few things so much as a trampoline, and Kristin is an old pro.

Here Kristin is trying to demonstrate the 'Rump Trick', but George is occupied with standing up.

Starting to get the hang of it, or the general idea of it anyway.

He can get the rump down all right, but hasn't got the bounce back up yet.
A walk round the Pottawattomie Kettle Trail

The southern end of the Pottawattomie Colony trail system, with the Canal Trail, begins near the culvert between the mid-lake ('Mirror Lake') and the second tranche of the canal to the big lake next door. One parks on the road above. 20 June 2025. (cf the map below)

Big horrible swampiness all round down here. Stay On The Path!!

Off we go. (-- Wait up!)

The Canal Trail begins along some kind of moraine that begins here and runs along a bit more than half a mile with drop-offs on either side.

So up we go onto the 'moraine' or whatever it is.
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Kristin's made a brief detour for a mushroom hunt, and we follow the track along in the 'full and certain knowledge' that she will catch us up soon.

Not yet though.

The Pottawattomi trail system is well maintained, but we have no idea who's in charge of it all. It goes back in time a fairly long way. And it's free!

Now we've descended off of that ' moraine' and are rounding westward on the Kettle Trail loop. At this point we're briefly passing some kind of civilization so-called and are executing our loop.

The fun begins any moment now.

Our first kettle, on our right, but actually . . .

. . . there's usually another on the other side as well.

But what is a 'kettle'? Here's our meagre info from a visit last year.
About the 'kettles', the National Park Service explains as follows: 'Kettles form when a block of stagnant ice (a serac) detaches from the glacier. Eventually, it becomes wholly or partially buried in sediment and slowly melts, leaving behind a pit. In many cases, water begins [to fill] the depression and forms a pond or lake—a kettle. Kettles can be feet or miles long, but they are usually shallow.'

And they call this 'shallow'. Hah!

We've neglected to include all of our kettle pix here -- they're all rather similar, and there are more from back on last year's visit. Now we'll continue our march, threading the needle amongst these giant holes in the ground.

Now we're back off the Kettle Trail and rejoining the Canal Trail home.
[Not exactly -- that's a photo from last year's walk.]

Along the Canal Trail, where Kristin absents herself from our felicity awhile to raid the local mushroom reserves.

Our Swiss Army knife comes in handy as keen-eyed Kristin descends upon what she describes as the (definitely non-toxic) 'Chicken-of-the-Woods' (Laetiporus sulphureus, we later learnt).

(Luckily, that's our larger than usual Swiss Army knife.)

Back up with the goods.

She subsequently made a very nice something-or-other for the entire clan, and froze the rest of it for any future occasions that may present themselves.

Transporting nature's booty back to civilization (such as it is these days)

Off the putative moraine, down past the appalling black swamp . . .

. . . like something out of nightmarish Greek mythology

And back up to Sylvan Shore Drive and the mid-lake culvert over the canal.

Cats intent upon something, possibly trading comments about it in purring whispers.

Likewise

We end this collection of iPhone 13 miscellanea with a pedal-by of a well-known rock near what we call Ryden's Island (which is only an island during times of low water levels).

The rock is in fact well known to us, but over many years it's gathered a lot of propellers off the boats of day-trippers not acquainted with the hidden horrors of this lake.
We understand that some of our friends here used to scavenge for lost speedboat parts, with snorkels on when required, back in their youths.

Next up: A few get-reacquainted tours of the lake, and a futile tussle with the Canal
 
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All rights reserved, all wrongs avenged. Posted 10 July 2025.
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