By morning, the rain had finally let up; there was still rain in the forecast for later in the day, but the morning was beautiful. 

So John wanted to take the boat out on Lake Murray.

Lotte and Richard owned a pontoon boat, which was moored over at Rick and Shirley's dock, next to their own pontoon boat.  It stayed there so that Rick and Shirley could look after it - plus, when the lake was low, during the summer months, it was deep enough at their dock that the boat wouldn't be left high and dry.

Lotte had mentioned that we were free to use their boat anytime we wanted to; the keys were located in the wooden bowl above the cabinets.  We found those easily enough; however, as we went down to the dock, we suddenly realized that we didn't know which boat was theirs!  I guess it would have helped to get a description first.  And it was early enough in the morning that we didn't want to go knocking on Rick and Shirley's door to ask them either.  So we just took a guess...

...and we guessed wrong.  Just as John was pulling the cover off of the first boat, Shirley emerged from her house and said, "It's the other one!"  D'oh!

We thanked her and replaced the cover on her boat, then started removing the cover from the other one.  Sure enough, that was indeed the correct boat; the key fit and everything!  In just a few minutes we were ready to leave the dock on our boating adventure.

As we took the boat out onto the lake, John checked the gauges and noticed that we didn't have much gas; there was only about a quarter of a tank.  He thought it would be a good idea to put some more gas in it, knowing that we would probably be taking the boat out several more times during our trip. We knew that there had to be some sort of marina at Dreher Island State Park, about two miles in a straight line across the lake from the house, so we headed in that direction.

We were in luck, too, because there was indeed a small marina at Dreher Island.  As we pulled into the cove, we found a boat dock, on which was an old-fashioned gas pump, and a ramp leading up to a marina store.

While John pumped gas into the boat, he sent me up with $10 to go pay for it - $10 would be plenty of gas to get us through the week.  Mary and I walked up the ramp to the store...only to discover that the store was closed!  There was no one there at all to take our money. 

But yet, the gas pump was still on!  They must have forgotten to shut it off.

So what else were we going to do?  We had already pumped $10 worth of gas into the boat, and it wasn't like we were there to steal gas; we had every intention of paying for it.  Yet we couldn't wait around for someone to show up either - after all, what if no one showed up until the weekend?

That said, we did what anyone else would have done in that situation: we left without paying but promised to pay later on in the week, when someone was there to take our money.

Now that there was more gas in the tank, we were free to explore the lake around Dreher Island State Park.  We took the boat under the bridge that served as one of the access points into the park, and from there, we sailed around the entire island.  We all took turns driving the boat; even Mary got to take a turn, and she did a very nice job of steering it!

It had started out as a great day, but by mid-morning, the weather started to turn on us.  At first, it was just cold and breezy; then, the clouds began to roll in.  John studied the clouds and determined that we needed to start making our way back towards the dock; otherwise, we were going to get soaked.

Too late!  Just as he said that, the skies opened up, and the rain came down hard.  While Mary and I huddled on the bench to stay warm, John drove us back to the boat dock, his hands almost frozen to the steering wheel.  By the time we made it back, we and the boat were completely soaked. 

We tied the boat up to the dock and did our best to secure the cover on it. As John snapped the last few buttons in place, he told me to take Mary back to the Lake House, to get her dried off and changed into warm clothes.  She looked like a drowned rat, shivering on the dock!

It took us a while too warm up from that experience; we were completely soaked through and frozen to the core.  Once we recovered, though, we decided that we needed to treat ourselves to lunch; we had seen an Applebee's off of I-26 in Irmo, near the Columbiana Mall, so we made that our destination. 

Though there was nothing spectacular about the Applebee's where we had lunch that afternoon, it was a memorable one.  Outside of the restaurant, we found one of the most beautiful displays of autumn leaves that we had ever seen.  We parked the rental car next to one tree that was completely bright red - it was a spectacular sight to see! 

After lunch, we headed into Columbia to go spend more time with the family.  We visited with Omi and Opa and showed them videos that we had taken since we had last seen them; we also stayed for dinner (John and I even did the dishes for Omi afterwards.)

When we returned to the Lake House, later that evening, the rain had finally subsided again.  Since there were still daylight hours left, he suggested that we go for another spin out on the lake.  Mary and I declined, so he opted to go by himself.  While he was gone, Mary and I stayed inside and worked on her homework for the week.

John returned an hour later, just as the sun was setting on the lake, marking the end of another adventurous day.  By that time, I had the fire going in the fireplace, and we were ready to settle in for the night...

Return to Giving Thanks.

Return to Naked in the Woods.