I spent a marvelous night by the side of the lake, tending my fire, heating up baked beans with my little backpacking stove, and listening to the fish jump. The humidity is dropping – no trouble seeing the Milky Way now, unlike on our trip here a month ago.
I was awoken this morning by a truck rumbling in ... and then promptly rumbling back out. The hunting season for Canadian geese opened yesterday, providing the rationale for drinking beer before sunrise in conjunction with outdoor activities. This wasn't an opportune spot for harassing waterfowl but they did find one right in the area; I heard a string of booms from shotguns, followed by lots of distressed honking, then a few minutes later a full squadron of geese arrived here, looking for some peace and quiet.
So this was the scene in the cool of the morning as I again retreated to the end of the dock, distancing myself as best I could from consumers.
Consumer Free Zone
I was pleased to see all four of them, feet down and on approach. I always count when I see a flock of Canadians – they mate for life and they stick to it. I suppose if you had to hunt it would be best to get mated pairs, but hearing six or seven shots and seeing all four birds intact? Perhaps a few less cans of 'breakfast' would aid in accuracy and selectivity.
I drank a bottle of Honest Tea with my baked beans – Moroccan Mint, which I acquired at The Market on Hill Avenue in Spirit Lake, Iowa. This is the only organic place within a hundred miles of here, they recently converted it to a coop, and when I walked in yesterday they were putting the finishing touches on ... the closing of the deli. The deli had half a dozen employees and I think it all added up to the equivalent of three full time jobs. They'd go gangbusters in the summer, when Okoboji, the resort town just to the south, nominal population 456, swelled to 5,000+ summer people, but the other eight months of the year were miserable. I surveyed the progress, gave Tammy a questioning look, and got a tight, somewhat bitter response "A changing economy".
There are other store fronts on Hill Avenue still empty (and I imagine they'll be getting company soon enough), just a mile west of the thirty unit condo built right on the edge of the lake, but built with improper foundation and already subtly tilted towards the water, condemned before it was ever inhabited. Spirit Lake itself, directly north of Okoboji, and a summer destination in its own right, has 500 empty homes with a population of 5,000 ... but you can't rent an apartment to save your life; all of the wind farm installations in the area have completely jammed the apartment rental market ... at least for this year and next.
As I'm pecking away here the still night air is gone and the breeze has picked up, curiously enough blowing in straight from the east. The prevailing winds here are out of the northwest and an east wind is an oddity that draws the attention of the natives; I wonder what sort of strange weather we're in for later today. No matter the direction, the turbines here are spinning. This little corner of northwest Iowa has perfect wind – seven to eight meters a second average and fairly solid throughout the year. I'm on my way to Minneapolis, north and east of here, but if I turned west instead I'd find the massive wind farms of Buffalo Ridge. We'll see how this week shapes up – I may just make it there yet.