Sad goodbyes, glad kayakings

Alas, the day dawned and it was time to take Hardy to the Burlington airport. Boo! Of course, he and Alan first had to head over to Quimby's to show Ray and Kevin pictures of his fish -- they were appropriately impressed. And who wouldn't be....seriously.

As everyone knows, fish tales take a long time so it wasn't until 9:30am that the boys were back to camp to pick me up for the ride to Burlington. It's a 2.5 hour drive so....should be fine. We did not, however, get any luck from traffic, behind one truck after another. Still, we made it at a little after noon for a 1pm flight and he made it. In our flustered attempt to get him in the airport, however, we lost our parking ticket which meant that we had to pay $10 for about 10 minutes of parking time. Oh well.

Lunch at the Vermont Sandwich Co down the road was mixed -- I didn't like my hummus and veggie wrap but Alan loved his turkey. And then we headed home, this time via St. Johnsbury where we stopped to do a little shopping. Great bookstore named Boxcar and a Caboose. They have an on demand book printing machine -- first I've seen, very cool. They call it the Espresso Book Machine. Neat!

We debated an early dinner at the Burke Cafe, which we love but haven't been to in years, but then decided to head home to Averill for a boat ride. Got in about 6pm, fussed with the boat motor for 40 minutes unproductively, and then decided to do a kayak ride instead. Great call. The lake got progressively calmer as we paddled south, eventually reaching the southern point (which we called Merganzer Pt since we always see them here). We crossed the lake to paddle lakeshore on the eastern edge heading into the sun as it lowered in the sky. Sun setting in the north, moon rising in the south, absolutely calm lake, a scattering of hexes on the water. Magic.