Now that was how to have a vacation. The only thing missing was Jennifer and Samantha. It was a week of celebrating 50 years of marriage for Earl and Francs, Darla's parents, but also a week full of family. The week started with a huge dinner on Sunday night hosted by Earl and Frances. I was overwhelmed by the nearly 60 bodies that descended on Marie's Mexican Restaurant in Chester, California. Earl asked each family to stand up and tell how they were related to the clan, which really helped me put some order to the various groups. These were all relatives from Earl's family. He has two brothers and two sisters and each of those families were well represented with sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters and even a few great grandchildren thrown in for fun. Earl's older brother and sister have already been married for fifty years and his younger sister is well on her way to 50 as well. His other brother, JR, is a confirmed bachelor, although when he was making his announcement, he said, "My wife is out there somewhere, I just haven't found her yet." We had a ball and many group pictures were taken. The top picture is of Earl and his siblings with their spouses. The fourth picture is of his sister, Geneva, and their extended family. They mostly live in Idaho and were the largest group represented at the dinner. The ninth picture is of a potluck that we had on the Wednesday night when several of the families had already left to head home. We still had over thirty for the potluck .
I had arranged a golf outing for eight of us on Tuesday at Bailey Creek Golf Course and the golfers and wannabes showed up Tuesday morning for our 8:50 and 8:40 tee times. The course is a resort course with a bit wider fairways, but still plenty of trees and some water to make things interesting. My group teed off first and we played the white tees to make things easier on the recreational golfers. Earl's brothers played behind us and decided to play the blue tees. When they finally caught up to us they gave us a bad time for playing the whites. I actually found the whites to be tougher as the ball travels so far up in the 4000 foot elevation. I shot 42 on the front and switched to the blues on the back and shot a nice 39 for an 81. Don and Robert in my group shot 93 and the brother's claimed to stop counting on the backside and started drinking.
Stan is Earl's brother-in-law and a cutup. He complained that a farmer should have designed the course, because they had some nice sand boxes and no kids playing in them, some water holes and no one fishing in them and the guy that designed the ball washers made them too high as he damn near broke his leg when he fell off the thing. We kidded JR as he was wearing a knee brace after golf and we figured HE was the one that fell off the ball washer.
Don planned a horseshoe tournament complete with a trophy for the winner. They played it the same day we golfed and I wanted to relax at the lake. I ended up going late and actually made it into the quarterfinals before getting beat by David. H e lost to Don in the final and Don won his own trophy. Don had a phone call on Thursday night and his 18 year old dog was so sick he couldn't get up. His friend called him and told him the dog wouldn't take his pain medication and tried to bite him when he was trying to feed it to him. The dog actually went into convulsions and Don rushed home in the middle of the night, but the dog died while he was en route. Alicia stayed on with Lucas until Saturday.
Our cabin was a 1600 square foot haven on the lake with it's own beach and a spot for us to put the jet ski for the week. We set up two Easy-Ups and left them up for the whole week and hosted many families, who made the trek over from the RV site to our cabin to use the ski and the private beach. Darla particularly liked it because it had a large kitchen, a huge deck overlooking the lake and a nice gas BBQ. It was two bedrooms and two bathrooms with a nice living room. The boys had the kids over one night and they played cards and dice until midnight. You can see a picture of the gang huddled around our dining room table above.
I also took Robert and his son, Drew, golfing on Thursday and we played nine holes at the Almanor West Golf Course on the West side of the lake. That course is much narrower and has pine trees throughout the course. I had a good day with the driver and shot a 39. Robert had a 44 and Drew shot 53, with a nice par putt on the final hole. We stopped for hamburgers at The Depot on the way back to the lake.
The families all enjoyed using our jet ski and we had four of them buy us gas during the week. The ski got quite a workout and went through about 50 gallons of gas. There were times that the ski was in constant use during the day as the teenagers were taking it out in twos and threes and even the adults were getting in on the fun.
We saw about five bald eagles and numerous osprey and other birds during our stay. The bald eagles are majestic and fun to watch as they scan the lake for fish. We could see them swoop down and grab the fish in their claws and head up to a perch in the trees high above to eat their prey. David hiked over to try to get some pictures of the Bald Eagles and stumbled upon a cache of about ten fish that the buzzards and osprey had collected and piled up in a clearing.
Well, that's about it. Darla is working on a tuna fish salad for dinner and boiling up some eggs. I'm sure it will include onion and celery and probably some dill pickle as well. That woman can cook. I hope you are all well and I'll write more next week. Darla is off to national conference with Silpada so I'll be batching it next week. Ciao.
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