Trade Days Weekend

Just back from a few days at the lake... and we happened to catch the "Trade Days" weekend up there. Trade Days is a huge flea market that is held in the town's park, which is a considerable size. I would guess that there are enough vendor spaces there to hold over one hundred booths, if not more. Being that this weekend's weather was on the cloudy side, and rainy weather was expected, there were less than 40 dealers in the park.

The vendors there had everything from soup to nuts (literally), from old glassware to brand new sunglasses. Clothing and toys, furniture and candles, homemade birdhouses and factory-made ironware. Hot dogs and popcorn to funnel cakes and barbeque. We bought a very pretty ceramic lighthouse for the mantel. It's made to hold a candle and it lights up very nicely and looks very much at home now over the fireplace there. I also bought a food chopper, the old kind with a glass jar at the bottom end and a push-down blade at the top end. Perfect for chopping onions and celery and nuts, and I used it to chop up some hard cheese and it worked just fine for that as well. (Our lake-house version of a mini food-processor.)

I made a list of all the Trade Days weekends for the rest of this year, so hopefully, we'll be up there for a bunch more of them. Should be lots of fun during the warmer weather when the park is filled with all sorts of vendors. Nothing better than a country flea market... you never know what you'll come across.

The cats were fine for the few days that we were there... they seem to remember the cottage now, and they spend most of their days (if it's warm enough) on the screen-porch, and the nights in the laundry room. They've also explored the new living room furniture, and they all seem to approve of our choices... all three of them took extended naps on the sofas during the weekend. I guess the more we take them in the car, the more they will get used to the ride also. Once again, we heard some meowing when we first started out, but then they all settled down and went to sleep.

The temperature was very warm at the lake, except for last night when we had a major rainstorm. According to our neighbor's rain guage, three and a half inches of rain fell last night up at the lake. We were going to stay there until tomorrow, but our neighbor also told us that another storm was heading that way tonight, bringing much colder temperatures, more rain, plus sleet. That was enough for us to hear.... we started to pack up the car, put the cats into their crates, and we left right after lunch.

Amazing how much warmer it was here when we got home.... the lake is just two hours northeast of us here, but it's enough to bring colder temperatures. Every time we drive in and out of the lake community up there, we see more houses that we missed during the other drives. Now that most of the leaves are down, you can see into all the little side-roads and just about all of them have homes, whether they're on the lake or not. I like it better during the Spring and Summer, though, when everything is green and lush and jungle-like. The cloudy, gray skies make the woods look old and tired, and opposed to the lively, vibrant green of the warmer months.

We sat on the back porch on Friday and looked at the properties on the other points around the lake... we found a large red-roofed house that looked to be on its own little island. Very nice house, with a lot of property... we got into the car and drove over to that side of the lake to see if we could find it, which we did. Huge house, super-huge boathouse and garage, and the street is very small and private. Now, if we were going to retire up to the lake, that would be the way to go... in a house larger than our cottage, with enough room for all the furniture we have here, plus whatever we'd want to take from the lake cottage.

Every time we drive up to the lake, we talk about the possibility of living up there. It's so quiet there, as compared to the area here, which has been growing in leaps and bounds. This community was perfect in size when we moved here in 1996, but since then, it's been over-built with condos and subdivisions, and now they're building multi-million-dollar deluxe condos on the waterfront here. More homes, more residents, more vehicles... which will mean new roads coming in, some of which have already been started.

Give unto me a blessed break. I always thought this would be our "last" home.... I haven't thought that way in a good long time now.