Lake Adventures

Kelly & Cathy rented a cottage on Big Otter Lake for a week. They invited us to come spend a day with them!

I forgot my camera while we were out on the water so I only got pictures in the evening. The kids LOVE Uncle Kelly! :) Maybe because he's a kid, too?

Piper decided around 9 pm that she had had enough Lake Life.

See Kelly's boat in the background? And see that sweet-lookin pontoon?

I'm quoting Kelly's friend, Scott, when I say it's the one that looks like "it's from 1908 and Henry Ford assembled it himself"

We were out on the water. We took the pontoon to the sandbar on Lake James and augured it. Cathy, Kaeleigh, Piper and I were swimming. Kelly, Scott, Mackinley and Jason took the boat and were tubing.

After a little while, Cathy and I started to wonder where the guys were. We didn't have to look long to see that the boat was stopped. We thought someone must have fallen off and they were just waiting to get back on. They sat there. And sat there. And a boat went between the tube and Kelly's boat. At that point we were very curious about what in the world was going on...clearly the tube was no longer attached to the boat with the rope!

Upon further observance, Cathy and I realize there's a lot of splashing going on around the tube. Now we're getting concerned (especially since the last we knew, it was Jason and Mackinley on the tube!). At this point Cathy decides to climb on the pontoon and call Kelly.

Kelly's boat ran out of gas. Scott and Jason were using the tube as a sort of "raft" and swimming behind it towards us to get the pontoon and take it over to Kelly because it had a gas can with a SMALL amount of gas in it. (No...Cathy and I could not drive the pontoon over...this thing is seriously ancient!)

Some nice passersby on a jet ski helped Jason & Scott by towing them in to the sandbar.

We got the gas can to Kelly and he headed to the marina to fill up.

End of story, right?

Wrong. This is a BROYLES story and a BROYLES trip which should have been a clue to us that this was definitely not over!

So while Kelly is fueling up with Mackinley, the rest of us start the long journey on the pontoon from James to Big Otter. We're chugging along. While at full throttle (a whopping 16 mph, hold your hat on), the motor would "jump". It did it all day, and the whole day before.

Jump. Crash. Kaboom. Silence.

"What just happened?!?!"

Cathy, from her seat at the back, "The motor FELL OFF!!!"

The rest of us, pretty much in unison, "WHAT?!?!"

A woman, tending her flowers, runs out on her dock "What just happened??!"

Scott goes to the back to assess the situation. We all have visions of the motor sitting on the bottom of the lake. "Now what?" I'm sure was on all of our minds.

Scott says "It's still there! It's just dangling!" Sigh of relief...kind of. A "dangling" motor can't be good.

The guys decide they need to jump in and "push" the pontoon to a more shallow area so they can stand and try to fix it. So they jump in. They are pushing and swimming and the wind is all the while blowing them the exact opposite direction of where they're trying to go.

Cathy jumps in to help. They make it! It must have been Cathy and all her womanly prowess! (and maybe my prayers??) At this point there's a nice little group of lookie-loo's standing on the flower-woman's dock, giving lots of advice.

The guys get the motor on, and after many tries and a resolution to just tow it, it starts. We make it back to the cottage and THAT'S the end of the story!

For me, anyway. I believe Kelly is still having pontoon woes.

Piper was out cold before we were even backing out of the driveway. Heck, I think she was out cold before the other two were even in their carseats!

It was a SUPER fun day, rickety pontoon and all (maybe even that added to our fun?). Thank you, Kelly & Cathy for including us in your vacation!!