Glorious!

 Today was perfect.

I got a lot of chores done.  I checked out the weather app last night and knew today was the day.

Off I went to the lake.  I left about 1:00.

The AC is put away and garage restored, which made Gigi very very happy.  The kiddie pool is cleaned and stowed too.

I had a terrible weight in my mind.  Someone posted about a gray tabby cat hit on highway 34 a few blocks from where Ricky had been released.   All day, I wasn't sure if it was or wasn't Ricky.  But it wasn't him.  I didn't know that for sure til this evening, when someone checked for me.

So it was crucial for me to get off to the lake and forget about everything.

The parking lot was almost empty.  I was there til I had to leave, about 5:00.   I ate handfuls of cutleaf blackberries for lunch off the vine.  They're invasive, I know, but I love their berries.  They mature later in the summer and early fall, so once the himilayans are done, I know the cutleafs will come out.

I paddled to the far side of the lake, to the little cove and then went swimming. I swam for a long time, completely alone, with so few people on the lake I could pretend there was no one but me.

There were two boats.   Both were labeled "Research".  One was clearly also labeled USGS.  Which I took to mean US Geological Survey.  Or something like that.

When I was sitting on a log, eating the berries, watching the lake, at peace completely, one of the research boats pulled in near me.  I could see them through the tree branches overhanging the lake.  I didn't trust them, given what has gone on with the fish people lawsuits, then the article that came out over the audit of resources put into salmon recovery that concluded all the money and programs, billions spent, had done really nothing to help salmon and that maybe other more obvious measures should be tried.  Obvious measures like fishermen not killing them for a few years.  

I took a video of them from behind the tree branches, trying to see what they were up to.   Well, they were taking sediment samples from the bottom of the lake.   I paddled around and asked them directly what they were doing and they told me testing for mercury.   They seemed unfamiliar in general with the lake and area and rivers.   

One of them asked when the bloom began.  I knew they meant the suspended particles in the water of algae.  It's not as bad this year as some years when I don't want to swim in the water by this time of August.   I told them its every year and can start as early as mid August or as late as a week before Labor Day.

I had a great day on the lake and finally about 5:00 had to leave.   I stopped by my friends' place on the way home, the mother and daughter pair I've known a long time and who are leaving for Michigan.  But they'd already left, that morning.  I messsage them, asked when they left and said I was at their place.  There was quite a lot of stuff in their yard still, so I thought maybe they hadn't left yet, but they were by now in eastern Oregon, on their way to their new lives in Michigan.  They told me to take anything I wanted, that somewhere there was a drop trap.  I looked and looked and found it!   A drop trap!  I also took the transfer cage I'd given them years ago.  And I took two totes of their Christmas items.  They'd had to leave the Christmas totes behind, because they had no room, but some of the things she's had since she was a child.  So I somehow also got them in my car, with the kayak, and I hope to find a way to get the things to them.    So long my friends.  Maybe I'll see you again one day. I hope I do.

Lisa and Savannah's place in Sweet Home.  But they were already gone.

Tomorrow there is supposed to be rain off and on all day.  But that was not today.

I had a spectacular day!  

Glorious!