Mark Twain Revisited

I failed to post about our recent trip to Mark Twain Lake, partially because its link to this blog is a loose one. But I haven’t been posting about anything else, either, so I might as well go with what we’ve got.

A few years ago we started doing an annual end-of-summer weekend at Mark Twain Lake, usually around the first weekend after school starts. Our family, Ann’s sister, and Ann’s cousin rent three cabins side-by-side at the state park, and we each have two kids, ages 8 – 11, and they all have a great time.

We started off our blog last year posting about the trashcan turkey, which had become a Mark Twain Lake tradition for us. But this year we rented a pontoon boat, and planned to be out and about on it during our usual turkey cooking time, so Ann’s sister stepped up the dinner plate and cooked us all up some fantastic fajitas instead.

I took along our fishing gear, but we never wet a line. The people camped next to us had a fishing boat and a rented pontoon, and they didn’t fish all weekend either. The pontoon was a big floating porch swing, and their fishing boat was busy tubing.

We tried tubing behind the pontoon. A 28-foot boat with a 50 hp engine was a little underpowered for this. The kids liked it, but kept asking me to go faster, even though I was already at full throttle. The boat was nice and roomy for the 12 of us, though.   

We did attempt to employ the crawdad traps again. We put them out on Saturday night, checked them once, then left them out for the rest of the night. We only caught one small fish, but I wasn’t surprised. The lake bottom was pretty muddy and unlevel from the shore. I think  crawdad would have had a hard time finding his way into one if he really wanted to get trapped.

So it was a great weekend in the outdoors, even if we didn’t do any hunting or gathering. Sometimes it can be nice to enjoy nature while you eat food from the grocery store.