Priscilla receives her first guest, rather ungraciously

Other than to immediate family, Priscilla had not yet been shown off, except by photo. Our first visitor, Marie, is an enthusiastic camper and fisherwoman. We figure she will be fine with the lack of hydro and as long as there is a dock to fish from all will be fine. Thank goodness contractor Mark will be delivering the floating dock the day before Marie arrives. As it turns out, the floating portion is the first part of the new dock system to be built and the rest will be built after we see how this part works with the shoreline and then the building will progress upwards with the final piece being the landing at the top of the stairs. It seems we have hired the perfect contractor for ourselves...he does things backwards too. We like him. He gets us. No odd glances are exchanged...yet.

Priscilla, having 22 years of experience already behind her, is starting to sputter a bit and she is not being subtle about it. Most notably, the fridge is not getting cold but, oddly, the freezer is working fine. Marie takes this in stride and just puts ice in her beer. Problem solved. Off she heads to the dock with that iced cold beer and her fishing gear. Ras joins her.

A few minutes later, I get a call on the walkie talkie to say the new floating dock is breaking away from its temporary mooring and can I come down to the water and help secure them all before they end up floating away. Marie was probably hoping the dock would break loose then she could chase after the big pickerel that just got away from her. We have no fishing boat at this point so Marie would have settled for a fishing barge, I'm sure.

A moment in time when more fish stories are fabricated.

Is it nice to laugh at your friends when they fall out of their kayak while attempting to disembark? Maybe not, but I did, and I find myself compelled to mention that Marie is the inaugural member of The Tippy Kayak Club at Turtle Falls. Hey, maybe we could call the place Marie Falls.

Back to Priscilla and her problems. With her new larger audience it's Show and Tell time for Priscilla. She's showing her age and telling us in no uncertain terms, fix me, fix me! The toilet is leaking. That sounds much worse than it is. It's really just the fresh water line from the pump that's leaking and every time the foot pedal is used to flush, clean water leaks onto the floor. No problem...Sham Wow to the rescue! We discovered very early one morning, in a heavy rain, the window in the dinette area leaks...badly. Niagara Falls comes to mind. This is a problem and explains the spongy section of the interior wall beside this window. Also, the winterizing antifreeze had not been flushed from the freshwater holding tank. Oh, that's not a pleasant smell. That means I now have to flush this tank a few times with water we just paid to have delivered to the lot. That's what I was doing when the rescue call from the dock came over the walkie talkie. I haven't even mentioned the noise from the generator that my brother loaned us for Marie's visit. We thought it would be nice to have some power while she was here. I will admit it was great to be able to charge the battery in Priscilla so we could run the water pump and turn on a light at night, but talk about can you hear me now! My ears are still ringing. Those things are unbelievably loud. Fun times on the land with Priscilla, indeed. Somebody, please, remind me again why we are doing this!

Shortly after Marie headed back to civilization, Ras and I looked at one another and agreed Priscilla was not a very gracious host and maybe it would be best to postpone any further visitors until these problems are fixed.

Marie did appear to enjoy herself though. She's far too polite to ever tell us if she didn't. She didn't catch any fish worth keeping. She got eaten alive by mosquitoes and she witnessed, first hand, Priscilla's penchant for problems. Her ears are probably still ringing too. She said she'd come back again next summer.

See you next year, Marie?
Mimi