Going to Cleo's Bath

In the morning of June 25, 2021, the boys checked on me before waking one of their cousins up. I spent some time gathering stuff together - clothes etc. I wanted to get them fed and dressed. By the time I had succeeded one of my brothers-in-law had started bacon and eggs.

I ate and tried to save some for the boys but they had had a bagel and a full bowl of cereal by then. My father was on his way to the rental from his mountain house by 11 so I prepared a bag for the days trip to the lake.

The boys were playing battleship. My older sister had a splitting headache. I noted to my younger sister that I needed to go shopping and she told me to go fast – she also told me to get her a hat.

I managed to be ready by 11:15 and got the boys out the door. They were displeased that my younger sister and her husband were not coming and wanted to watch baseball with their cousin. However, they had gotten into dad’s car by the time I got everything outside.

At the lake the boys opted to stay in the car with dad. It was not terribly hot. I bought snacks and sunglasses - hats for my younger sister and I. I bought stuff at the sports shop. I also introduced my older sister to a neighbor of dad’s mountain house and the woman who ran the coffee shop, when they happened to be nearby.

At the boat dock my younger sister was nearly ready to get us a pontoon boat. Ten of us got on the boat while dad was parking. Unfortunately, dad never showed up. My older sister said he likely went home because he never likes getting on boats. We went to the lake’s inflow and we looked for a dock. We saw the dam.

A short while later, a resort worker came out on a motor boat to tell us dad was waiting at the dock and so we went out to pick him up. My older sister’s husband found the dock near the lake inflow then. My niece and I took the boys up to the bridge on the river. We saw some hikers going to Cleo’s bath - a high mountain pool nearby. I took a dip with the boys in the river. They loved it. I noted that getting out there was a real hike.

When we got back to the dock my sisters and the niblings were all there. We all hung out on the point near the dock until it was time to go. There had been a bit of thunder and the resort told us we couldn’t be on the lake in the event of lightning.

We headed back and during the transition to the car, as I prepped the boys, we saw the hikers on their way back from Cleo’s bath. Dad drove us to my sister’s rented cabin 25 minutes away.

When we got there the boys played battleship and we had ribs. My nephew had prepared them. I gave the boys s’more‘s and a kinder egg after that. I tried to get them interested in bed and started winding down. One of the niblings read them a book. Once they were asleep we watched Sherlock Holmes.

This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.