Hazy Labor Day Sunrise

6:27

7:01

Our House

Frying Homemade chips

Yum

Labor Day Picnic

Enjoying the campfire with Marjorie Scholtz

Up at 5:35 for some reason. still dark, a smell of smoke in the air from last night's campfire.  Still warm and humid, 65 degrees, the sky is beginning to lighten though the haze/clouds still obscure the rising sound.  An empty, silent lake so far, a few bird sounds, nothing else.  Today is the beginning of the great Chautauqua diaspora, as the area begins to empty of summer residents and we locals (that's us) take our land back!  Less traffic, on road and lake, the CI open year round, everything changes but slowly, even the green trees are beginning to show some color.

We did have a nice kayak ride yesterday morning, before it got too warm, down towards Whitney Bay. To our amazement, we kayaked past two burnt houses, a third also damaged.  We had heard that there had been a fire two weeks ago, but saw nothing about it in the paper and had not paddled down this way in a couple of weeks.  They were both small fishing cottages in an area of Magnolia where the cottages are literally on top of each other.  What a shock.

Since we were having the Leonard's and Mc Clure's over for a picnic, I drove off to get some of the food at Wegman's, packed with late shoppers just like me, as Evie stayed home and got things  ready for dinner.  The major project was the making of home made potato chips, time consuming, as you cut the potatoes, soak them, then dry them, and cook them in batches, at least ten batches this time, very time consuming but amazingly good.  Everyone loved them.  We all sat out and enjoyed the late afternoon breeze, drinking some Southern Tier Draft Brew, which Ron and Linda had picked up in a half gallon bottle, a nice tradition since I had taken them a bottle two weeks ago.  We sat around eating chips and shrimp cocktail, but no bean bag for some reason.  I grilled some chicken thighs, and we ate them with noodles, coleslaw and fresh corn, all perfect for a Labor Day Picnic.  We then sat outside till about 10:00, around our new fire pit, thanks to my son in law Drew, and enjoyed the occasional fire works as we celebrated the end of summer, the beginning of what we hope will be a long Autumn.  And the moon rose spectacularly, over Bemus Bay, at just about the same spot the sun rises in the morning.  Amazing.