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.
A few get-reacquainted tours of the lake, and a futile tussle with the Canal
Mostly from early July 2025

It's late June, actually, but we're rereconnoitering the west lakeside down to the South Bay. With a special eye for status updates on the arboreal carnage.

All much as before, over recent and not-so-recent years -- we think that there is a special perverse aesthetic to all of these emblems of Nature's dark downside.

That's Chase Island, 3.2 km south of Mussent Point, and now we're executing a hard right . . .

. . . under the highway bridge into . . .

. . . South Bay (cf map below), a bit less than half a kilometre to the cove at the far end.

With some of our enduring favorites, still fading slowly into the lake (until the final splash)

Mind the propeller!
This is normally a good place to pause and enjoy the sight of basking turtles on the fallen perches, but nothing today (and generally fewer every year).

Looking back out the length of South Bay, interrupted by what has in the past been a semi-reliable target for a turtle sighting, or two.

But none at all today.

We're passing Cousin Rob's memorial bench on the Tigertail, featuring . . .

. . . the steady undercutting of the lakeshore by storm waves, ski boats, and most of all! the wake boats, with their enormous waves at serious speeds.

Many northern Wisconsin towns are banning, not the wake boats themselves, but the wakesurfing use of them on their lakes. Our town council has held public discussions for a ban here, and the contributors have been scientifically and morally convincing, but the three councilmen will make the final decision by themselves . . . and there's a strong feeling that the fix is already in.
But it was not to be -- without heavy equipment, those rocks are not going anywhere. And on 2 August 2023, Cousin Rob signaled meaningfully that it was time to give it up.

In the meantime, though, I'd climbed over the barrier shore and discovered that the whole swamp was only about 3 inches deep. Our propellers are more like 16-17 inches deep.

Farther along in South Shore Bay, storm damage. (June has been that kind of month here.)

The neighbors tell us that they've contacted the owner, who may soon be pricing out a new shore station.

The point of Tigertail on the left, impenetrable Pink Island on the right, and a sandbar peeking into South Shore Bay in the centre, a good one for a family picnic off a pontoon boat in good weather. With colorful floating plastic toys for the kids to ride round on.

Ryden's Island leading back up into the main lake, and . . .

. . . on the left, a rocky sandbar that, depending upon the water level and headwind, can make this a full-speed hydrobike challenge.

Made it. We always called this 'Crossing the Bar'.
Apologies to Tennyson

A cute outbuilding on the peninsula and sandbar leading from Raymond's Island

A super group of fish egg nests

Hydrobikes are always up for a bouncy wave challenge, as long as we don't get blindsided.

Pointing into them, we can sink the fronts of the pontoons almost up to our knees and not get rolled over.
Serious wake- and ski-boat waves, especially if they're coming in from different directions simultaneously, can be a fine athletic experience, if one is vigilant.

That's Baby Leigh, the State of Wisconsin's own little island, though they've probably forgotten about it decades ago. (Evidently an unpaid property tax issue)
Back to the Canal (more fool)

We're pedalling across our Tomahawk Bay to check out the current state of the canal to Lake Tomahawk on the far side, 2 July 2025. Three teenage kayakers have just emerged from it, but it doesn't see much traffic these days.

For the past few years, the second tranche of the canal had been too strewn with fallen débris to get all the way through with a hydrobike. Cousin Rob had been dutifully using a handsaw to force a way through, but now we're on our own. Last summer, missing Rob's help, we were lucky to push our way through on one of our last days here, but luck is, well, just luck.

Canoers and kayakers have a somewhat easier way with it (as seen above), but the hydrobike propellers hang 16 to 18 inches below the waterline (depending on the rider's weight).

The first part of the canal, from our side, has always been easier, but even there, time has not been generous. In 1996 or so, we got a motorboat with three passengers through with virtually no problems.

The whole canal reaches some 720 meters over to the far end, but the first part, to the mid-lake, is only about 180m (ca. 600 feet).

The mid-lake, or 'Mirror Lake', is rimmed with serious swampiness nearly all the way round, and up until the past five years or so, this was the best place to come to photograph turtles sunbathing on the fallen débris.
And a few times, frogs as well; and once, a snoozing snake.

The lake is just 150 meters (ca. 500 feet) across.

No turtles here, and . . .

. . . no turtles there. Perhaps later in the season.

Today we're going to sneak in and assess the situation in the second stretch, and our chances, in the fond hope that some worthy nature lover with a small saw may have preceded us through.

The head of the second part of the canal, with the excellent bench (called 'Come Sit With Me') installed (and chained down) by the Northwoods Land Trust, after Cousin Rob and his family's trust donated all of this to the Land Trust, and the Pottawattomie Colony association, which maintains a reticulum of walking trails to the north, of which this is the southern end.

Through the culvert, and . . .

. . . out the other side. At a first glance along the 405m length of the second tranche, this might be doable.
The green arrow is for snowmobile riders who've been directed over the unfrozen culvert to the snowcovered road above -- here they can rejoin the canal to the next lake.

Uh oh. That looks familiar.

But it doesn't appear to be the same small tree. This one's anchored in the bank on the left side, though; pushing back a passage round it seems unlikely.
This year's barricade is lodged on both sides of the canal, as it turned out, and our brave efforts to rock the bike over the top of it left us stranded on it for five futile minutes before we could rock back off it.
Standing down on the canal bottom to move the thing out of the way by hand is not feasible, for there is essentially no bottom. Falling into the water here is a pelvis-level proposition.

So we'll need to turn the hydrobike round and retreat. That, however, is usually another tense five minute proposition in itself, given the bike's wide turning-circle and the masses of vile crap festooning both canalbanks.
(Our photos of that escapade last summer are still available here, with some vintage pix of the canal in olden days.)

Very disappointing, but at least we're not going to be stuck here, possibly forever. Perhaps we'll come back with a small saw, someday.

Nature's Handiwork

Successfully home at last.
That little adventure was always more fun, and safer, when Cousin Rob was with us. He had more tools, and better knees.

It's almost 9 a.m. -- soon the daylight fun time will begin.

After which, Melvin knows just where he wants to spend most of the afternoon.

These two little fellows, presently being cat-sat whilst their mom is on a mission, are Pugsly and Wednesday, Choupette's half-siblings originally from Roanoke, Virginia.

They always get along together. And mostly get along with Melvin. And occasionally get along with Choupette.

In this case, it's hard to guess what the social cat dynamics are.

But this is obvious. Beginning at 7 a.m., Melvin and Choupette line up for the 9 a.m. starting gun.
In the early morning, evidently, small creatures and sometimes worm-seeking birds have come out to get a head start.

And then, of course, there are always these vile beasts. That's an occasional sentry post, precisely outside our study window, where the eagles come to hang out and look for prey, mostly just dead fish floating on the water, but sometimes more ambitiously.

We don't seriously worry about them very much anymore, now that Choupette's grown up a bit larger, but in her first two or three years we had to maintain a virtually nonstop watch for these awful beasts.

Apologies for seeming to be casting aspersions on our National Bird.
This one is an adult, but we often get some of the larger juveniles here as well.

We're typing along to a nostalgic view of the Château de Chillon on Lake Geneva, but . . .

. . . swapping it out for a restful view from the Teawhit Head near the Native American Quileute Oceanside Resort in La Push in 2004, in the Olympic National Park (source).

Rounded off with an admirable painting on the wall next to our summertime desk.
Tommy Burrell's loon pix

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.

A loon, effecting a classic loon takeoff
The Lake in the Wisconsin Northwoods

Mussent Point is at no. 12.
The text overlays are updating a few names to our current understanding.
Soon: Just a few more amusing lakeshore photos (mid-July 2025)