The Camp, mit Dechers

Last Wed-Sun we spent with our friends Jan and Laurel Decher, and their daughter Isabel, at the camp.

Susan grew to know and love the Dechers during graduate school. They are now in Burlington, so camp was a nice halfway point.

It w

as a weekend of delicious food, including s'mores (tm), delicious pasta, kebabs, blackberry cobbler, blueberry-banana pancakes, and a grilled whole chicken

eaten by candlelight in the dusk on the deck overlook

ing the river. (

Not all in one night.)

And of course the requisite trips to the Lor

na's Higley Hideaway Diner Cafe and, Sunday before departure, a trip to Sergi's.

Several photos here from a "forced march" (Susan's term for our walks with Sam) along the Stone Valley trail. Isabel and Sam, despite a five-year age difference, got along quite well.

Everyone got along with Josh. Isabel and Sam perler beaded up a storm, and Sam and I played our first real game of dominoes--though Sam was just as happy to make towers out of them. :-)

Spotted the local eagle flying by; let the kids escort a turtle across the road; spotted three chorus frogs on the Terrific Trees nature hike at the state park; heard many lonely loon calls; Sam . Sam and Isabel also enjoyed rowing around in the "sport yak" rowboat, which Isabel dubbed the Drunken Duck.Another treat was Susan's reading aloud from Summer At Buckhorn (with some care to explain the racial anachronisms to Sam). Sam and Isabel drank it up, enjoying the youthful adventure of it.

And finally, good conversation. The time was not enough, and we each had our own distractions, but still managed to stay up late discussing the fates of mutual friends and our own cares.