| May Day |
Hurray, Hurray, for the first of May!!! [. . .] We used some words from Sir William Watson for the first of April, (if you'd like to refresh your memory, click HERE). They worked well; so if you don't mind, we'll use a few more of his words for the first of May. What is so sweet and dear As a prosperous morn in May, The confident prime of the day, And the dauntless youth of the year. -- Sir William Watson (1880) | |
| May 2nd | My bird book says that House Wrens should be back in this neck of the woods on May 1st. Yesterday was May 1st, and yesterday I heard the first Wren song of the season. Amazing!!!! They must fly with little calendars in their pockets. | |
| May 3rd | I haven't seen one of these guys since I left the resort. Who woulda ever thunk there'd be one in this neck of the woods?!?! Click HERE. | |
| May 4th |
Aha!!! The Hummingbirds are back!!! The first one appeared yesterday about noon. Has anyone else seen any yet?
As usual on this day, "May the 4th be with you!" | |
| Cinco de Mayo |
Drinking a fine dry Sherry after dinner has a certain indescribable feeling, a certain joy.....a certain "je ne sais quoi" one might say. But whatever it is, it's darned good! And I am unanimous in that. -- Jerry Angst (2005) | |
| May 6th | A new entry, titled Grocery Shopping for a Fishing Trip with Father, has been added to the LBLR "Stories, Poems, & Anecdotes From the Northland" page (it's number 31, incidentally). It was written by Dave Broers, a long time LBLR customer. It's short, amusing, and true which, by the way, is the exact definition of an anecdote, so I suppose I should be calling them anecdotes, rather than stories. The "Stories, Poems, & Anecdotes From the Northland" page is HERE, but you can go directly to "Grocery Shopping for a Fishing Trip with Father" by clicking HERE. | |
| May 7th | Nothing of interest happened today. Granted, today wasn't as dull as April 11, 1954, but still.......no entry! Click HERE. | |
| May 8th | As you may have read in a Chronicles entry late last year, Deb's brother Lennie passed away this past October. Due to COVID restrictions it took a few months to do it, but a Memorial Happy Hour was finally held in his honor. It was at the Croation Hall in Inver Grove Heights, one of Len's favorite taverns, and it was attended by lots of Len's family, friends, and drinking companions, including many of his high school classmates. Click HERE. | |
| May 9th | A Chickadee is building a nest in a bird house in the same area (different house though) that a Wren used last year. I hope the Wren doesn't show up and roust her out of there. Bird houses should be used on a "first come, first served" basis. Click HERE. | |
| May 10th |
Eighty-one years ago this morning, Germany invaded Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg both by air and on land. Eighty-one years ago this afternoon, Neville Chamberlain stepped down as Prime Minister of Great Britain (actually he was more or less forced out), and Winston Churchill took over.
Everytime I write something like that, I think "Geez, that really wasn't very long ago"! | |
| May 11th | Us older people should always leave our waitress a big tip. She's probably working much harder for a living than we are, and the extra money might bring a smile to her face. | |
| May 12th | Sorry, nothing again. | |
| May 13th |
There's a resort Up North on Country Road 4 between Squaw Lake and Talmoon, named the Anchor Inn. It opened for business in 1921 when that section of the country was hardly occupied. Today, after 100 years it's still in business and, as you might expect, it has an interesting history. Click HERE to see a clip from a July 1939 issue of the Grand Rapids Herrald-Review, 18 years after it first opened. But for a better description of its history, read about it on their web-site by clicking HERE. As I said, it's very interesting. [Thanks for the information Gary (in Tennessee). And speaking of Gary, he stayed there back in 2008-2009, and he sent me a picture of one of the old cabins (click HERE). If you peruse the Anchor Inn web-site, you'll see that the cabins these days are much much different than they were back in 1921.]
PS: By way of comparison, LBLR, which is considered to be an old resort, opened for business in 1932, at which time the Anchor Inn had already been serving guests for eleven years. This is LBLR's 89th year as a resort. By the way, LBLR history (up to but not including the current owners) is HERE. | |
| May 14th |
Tomorrow is the fishing opener; are you ready? Who's going out? Where are you going?
Minnesota Fishing License sales are down a tad from last year, but still way above the pre-COVID days. The interesting details of the COVID surge in fishing license sales were mentioned in the Chronicles for May 6th and 8th of last year. It's HERE. | |
| Fishing opener |
THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES!
Chronicles entry for the Fishing Opener in 2000, twenty-one years ago: Today is the fishing opener!!! It was cold, it rained, it sleeted, it was windy.........but three of us stuck it out for 3 hours, and all we got were 2 Northerns. Oh well, there's lots of fishing ahead of us yet. Chronicles entry for the Fishing Opener in 2014, seven years ago: Here are two extremely rare things for today, which is the fishing opener: 1) the weather is gorgeous, and 2) the price of gas didn't go up. Amazing! Now to wait and see how the fishing is. Note added today: It seems that the weather on most fishing openers was similar to the one in 2000. Not all of them of course, as is shown by the entry from 2014, but for the most part they were not your most pleasant days to be on the lake. But at least the bad ones were usually tolerable; I can only remember one year when the weather was so bad that virtually NONE of my die-hard fishing friends went out, which isn't too bad for 26 fishing openers. By the way, the weather in Grand Rapids for today is supposed to be mostly cloudy, with a high near 66. Southeast wind around 5 mph becoming southwest in the afternoon. A 40 percent chance of showers, mainly before 5pm. As fishing openers usually go, that's darned nice! | |
| May 16th | Ah yes......coffee and a crossword puzzle on the front porch in the early morning. For many years this was an almost daily summertime ritual (weather permitting, of course). But no more.......except maybe while on vacation at LBLR later this summer. Click HERE. | |
| May 17th |
Not only am I old, but my regular fishing buddies from over the years have gotten old too! For that reason, the fishing reports from the opener are pretty sparse.......almost non-existent, in fact. So even though they're hardly worth mentioning, I'll do it anyway. But before you read this, bear in mind that a number of years ago, all of these people would have been out on the lake at the crack of dawn, no matter what the weather and even if they had a bad hang-over from their preparations the night before (as was typical). Then they would have fished all morning long, took a short break for lunch about noon, and then fished until suppertime. AND THEN they would have done the same thing the next day!!! Here are their reports this year (and remember, the weather was georgous):
PS to Gary in Tennessee: I know you're not a Minnesotan, and the opening of fishing is different in Tennessee, but do you (being a longtime avid fisherman, including in Minnesota) have any comment about today's entry? | |
| May 18th |
In case you've ever wondered: This year the fishing season for Walleye and Northern Pike opened on May 15th. That's the latest possible date for the opener under Minnesota law, which sets the fishing opener as the Saturday two weeks prior to the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. PS to my Dear Daughter Tammy: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! | |
| May 19th | Nothing for today. | |
| May 20th | To this day in High Wycombe, England (a town near London), the incoming mayor is weighed in a public ceremony that has its roots back in the middle ages. When he leaves office he is weighed again. If he weighs the same or less, the crowd cheers as a sign of their appreciation and gratitude for the hard work he has done for the community. If he has gained weight during his term, which means that he has been indulging in too much good living at the taxpayers' expense, the crowd jeers and boos. In years gone by, he would have been pelted with tomatoes and rotten fruit. | |
| May 21st | This is a campfire from this time of the year back in 2015. It's a nice fire, but I don't know who build it. It sure wasn't me because I never built "teepee fires", though a lot of the LBLR guests did. Click HERE. | |
| May 22nd |
If you've fished in Minnesota over the last several years, you are probably aware that many of our lakes have their own "special regulations" regarding season dates, limits, methods of fishing, etc. This has been the case for many years, and the list of lakes with special regulations grows every year. I tried to count them for this year but I quit counting when I got to 200, and I only got up to the ones beginning with "M".
Oddly enough, if you read the Special Regulations section in the "Minnesota Fishing Regulations" book for 2021 (the one you got with your fishing license), you'll notice that the regulations for Lake Mille Lacs are noticeably absent; the book merely refers you to a web-site. That's because they're subject to change during the year, and besides that, they're not exactly simple. Take a look at the Lake Mille Lacs regulations for this year, and see what you think; they're HERE. Well, what do you think? That's a bit more complicated than when, as kids, we fished from the banks of the Shiawassee River in Michigan. Back in those days a few types of fish had a size limit, and anything smaller than that had to be thrown back (which we seldom did anyway). The rules were as simple as that. [Aside -- Hey Stover, can you imagine what we would have done with rules like that back when we were twelve years old and fishing in the river? -- End of aside] Note: If this looks like I'm dissing the Minnesota DNR, be advised that I DEFINITELY AM NOT!!! I have the utmost respect for the DNR and what they are doing to preserve our outdoor life. I sincerely believe that they have science and the experience to back up their rules and regulations. And in additon to that, they were always helpful to me during my twenty-six years at LBLR. | |
| May 23rd |
Dave B and his son Parker are on a fishing trip Up North and they're staying at LBLR this week as usual. The first fish was in the boat 9 minutes after they got on the water last night, and they did quite well. It looks like they're catching some again this morning also (click HERE). If fishing on the opening was poor, it appears that it may have turned around a bit.
PS to Dave and Parker: I assume that you guys are not exactly happy with the new "Special Regulation" setting the Sunfish limit at five per day on Jay Gould Lake, right? | |
| May 24th |
Today is Queen Victoria's 202nd birthday (she died in 1901), and it's a Legal Holiday in all of Canada except Quebec (sigh). So.......Happy Victoria Day to our friends north of the border; I hope you're enjoying it by traveling, visiting, fishing, or whatever you do on a long weekend in late May.
Aside -- Queen Victoria lived to be 81 years old and she reigned for a tad under 64 years, which was the second longest reign in the 955 year history of the English Monarchy. The 64 years of her reign are named for her -- it's the Victorian era. Elizabeth II, the current Queen and great-great-granddaughter of Victoria, is 95 years old and has reigned for a tad over 69 years. No doubt her reign will be known to history as the Second Elizabethan Era, don't you think? AND YOU WERE THERE! | |
| May 25th | One more picture (the last one) from Dave and Parker up at LBLR this week. Click HERE. (I recognize the stove, it's in Cabin 2.) That looks like a nice meal of fish (and pork chops), doesn't it? As I just said, that'll be the last picture.......but I won't guarantee that there won't be any other comments, maybe a final fishing assessment when they leave, for example. | |
| May 26th | Click HERE to see a lovely comparison. | |
| May 27th | Nice sunrise from the dock by cabin 2, with cabin 3 in the picture. Click HERE. (Thanks Dave.) | |
| May 28th | If these Chronicles were still coming from LBLR, you would be hearing about waking up this morning to a temperature of 28 degrees! By way of comparison, the temperature in the cities this morning was 40 degrees. | |
| May 29th | In the midst of a sojourn to the Northland, so I haven't come up with anything to say. Sigh....... | |
| May 30th | See above....... | |
| Memorial Day |
See above (yet again).......but in view of the fact that it's Memorial Day, I'll repeat the entry from this day in 2010, 11 years ago:
This message is simple, but important. Click HERE. This is my oldest grandchild (Josh) raising the flag that draped the casket of my Dear Grandpa. He was my Grandpa's first great-great grandchild. When Josh was born, my grandpa (who would have been 116 years old this year) had been dead for almost two years. Click HERE and HERE. |
