To the Big Lake!

This week, we were supposed to be traveling to Seattle/Tacoma, WA, for a family gathering. It's Paul's hometown, and his older sisters and their families still live there. His sister, Mavis, had flown in earlier from Phoenix to see her daughter and his other sister, Marilyn, was celebrating her birthday. So it seemed the perfect time to see them and to visit with our son, Jack. We missed seeing him at Thanksgiving when he flew into Minneapolis and then spent his whole vacation at his brother’s Keith’s house near the airport because of a huge snowstorm in the entire region. We never did get to see him! Even though we had the tickets purchased and a rental house secured, the trip was not to be. Two weeks before our scheduled flight, it became clear that Seattle was at the epicenter of the Coronavirus outbreak in US. It was an agonizing decision to make, but the day before we were to leave, we canceled our plans. It just seemed too risky to potentially expose elderly relatives in Seattle as well our family members here to this disease. Since we already had a safe place for Maddie to stay (Lupine Kennels!), we decided to take a two-day trip to the South Shore of Lake Superior. March is typically a quiet time around the lake which makes it a favorite time for us to be there! This was no different – we were the only guests staying in the Lumberman’s Inn in Iron River, WI! The trails and beaches were open, but most of the time, our car was the only one in the parking lots. Although there were still big ice chunks in the lake and the wind blew frosty off the lake, it was the perfect remedy for a long winter indoors and a wonderful time to take pictures and collect new images for future paintings. My “painting” for this week are photos from a couple of our favorite spots – a rustic cabin in the woods near the marina at Port Wing, WI, and huge sailboats in the winter boatyard at Cornucopia, WI.