Fishing With My Uncle - Arrival

 Part 2 - Arrival

We made it.Twelve hours from Michigan and in a land and lake I have never seen before. Uncle Ken's life long vacation destination. A place he grew up at. A place he took his daughters and his wife. We arrived.

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Pelican Rapids, MN is a small town. The kind of town with one stop light. The kind where everyone knows everyone. Halfway between I-94 and Detroit Lakes, MN is where you will find it. It has one pizza place, the aptly named Pelican Pizza. It has one bar, a small grocery store and two gas stations that double a co-ops and tackle shops. It's a town that sees tourists primarily because of the numerous lakes that surround it. The largest nearby lake, Lake Lida, would be our home for the next several days.

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As we drove up to our temporary home, there multiple houses set up along the road. All named after different kinds of birds. There was a cabin called Cardinal. Another was Oriole. Another was Bluejay. Then we saw it. Robin. Our cabin. Cabin is probably too strong a word. When one envisions a cabin, it is usually a log structure. Robin was not quite that. Large enough for two people only, it was more the size and shape of a shed. That said, it had a small bedroom, a second bed in the main living area, a stove and a full bathroom. For two guys that are going to be on the water the entire time, it was perfectly serviceable. And that is all we needed it to be. 

The car was filled to the brim with gear and clothing. We spent months trying to determine what needed to bring. There were rod cases, tackle boxes, bags of clothes, a stray fly rod, food, a cooler full of earthworms and outboard gear for the boat we rented for the week. We over-packed by all accounts. But we had to be prepared for anything and everything.

"Weather up here can be temperamental," said Ken. "It can be sunny one minute and storming the next." I would recount those words very soon.

For the next couple of hours we unpacked and started setting up our gear. Uncle Ken brought a trolling motor and sonar and asked that I work on mounting them on the boat we had rented for the week.

Turned out neither the trolling motor or the sonar would mount to the boat we had. So we would spend the week making due without.

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That night a great storm passed through. There have been very few times in my life where I was genuinely concerned about my safety. I can count it on one hand, in fact. This was one of them. The wind and rain came down on our little shack so hard, I expected the roof to come off. Lightning constantly flashed and the thunder roared. A a large tree outside my window was struck and I could feel and hear the crackle of electricity from it.

But even through all of that terror this storm brought, what it would reveal to us as the sun finally broke over the horizon and through the last remaining clouds will stay with me always.

- WRS