Enjoying life and fishing at Center Lake

The week here in Custer was a lovely one. We went out fishing three out of the five days this week. We actually enjoy Center Lake over Sylvan Lake as it isn't so busy with tourists and is a bit larger. Here is a picture of a part of Center Lake aimed toward the small boat dock taken from John's kayak. No big boats allowed on this lake.

Here is a picture of Travis and Cindy fishing near the rock formations. None of us, except for John, had much luck this day.

Here I am doing my best trying to catch a darn fish . . . they weren't too interested in anything I cast to them this day. No matter, I simply enjoy being out on the water with just the sound of my paddle slapping the water - so incredibly peaceful.

When we had loaded up the kayaks, we were standing chatting with Travis and Cindy in the parking lot when we saw this young buck bound down the hillside towards us totally unaware of us standing there. The young buck looked like his legs were on pogo sticks as he literally bounced along. I think we all got a lot of pleasure watching him.

John and I went up to Rapid City on Wednesday were we had to stop at Scheels and Cabela's (of course). Well, the salesman at Cabela's sold John three lures that were supposedly "the bomb " here in the Black Hills. Not according to the fish in Center Lake on Thursday. I did have a funny experience in that I had read about trolling on a lake for trout on the internet so I thought I would give their recommendations a try. Nothing was happening so I paddled over to John to ask him "so, how will I know when I have a fish on the hook?" when I only got the word so out when wham, I had a fish on the hook. I guess now I know how you know - lol. The timing was very funny in my opinion.

The weather on Friday was going to be very windy so we decided it would be a good time to hang around home. I decided to rearrange my kitchen cabinets, got rid of some items that haven't been used in almost two years and then I was off to the bedroom where I got rid of some shoes and clothing. Soon I had a stack of items in the living room ready for donation. My organizing frenzy got to John as he was soon organizing his basement. I guess you can officially say we are starting to get "hitch itch" when we start cleaning and organizing in preparation of getting back out on the road.

Saturday proved to be a wet mess. John got rained out of his Workkamper duties for the day. My hours have been switched to Sunday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. what with the limited staff the campground has now since all the other Workkampers have flown the coop (we sure do miss their smiling faces). As John wasn't working and we had quite a few items taking up space on the loveseat and floor, we decided to drive up to Rapid City to drop the items off at a thrift store. We thought it was raining in Custer but in Rapid City it really poured. After a stop for lunch and some shopping at Target, we headed home where it was considerably drier. John had to use the kayak's bilge pump to get all the rain water collected in the cockpits out. It was quite the sight watching John pump the water out while the kayaks were still on the roof of the truck. We really had accumulated a lot of water in the boats.

Rick and Y gave us a call on Skype. They are about 15 miles from West Yellowstone and are having such a wonderful time that they are planning on staying two weeks instead of one. It was really nice hearing from them. They have become quite the geocachers with something like 70 finds (some international - found in Canada). Glad we introduced them to something they really enjoy doing.

Tomorrow weather's is iffy so John may not be able to work his shift again. We will have to wait and see. The bad thing is that John will have to make up the time during the week (bummer).