Random Photos on The Water

 Hi everyone. Happy Friday. Today is a travel day for my husband and myself. We are on our way home after  a nice but busy trip away. (This is another scheduled post with a few comments added by me before it goes live.)

I had this post that I wrote back in August. I was going to publish this a few weekends ago, only I realized  that I had a couple of pages  for last month's AJJ challenge that I still wanted to post before the challenge and the month ended. Since this post is something I could publish anytime and not when a challenge was about to end, I decided to hold onto it and schedule this post  when I wasn't home.

Here is my post that I originally wrote for August 28.

August was a busy month for me, and for once, mostly full of fun busy, not chore busy. It also was warm, and since it's summer, I spent a lot of time on, in and by the water.

(There's lots of photos in this post. Hope you can stick through them all-😏)

My MIL lives on a small lake about 30 minutes north of us, and since (as you might remember I mentioned before)  she is declining in health, my husband and I spent at least 1 day, if not both days, at her house during the weekends. We don't stay over night as it's an easy drive back and forth, but we do get some lake time while there.

A couple of weekends ago there was a duck who was a big TEASE. We've seen her before, and she is often alone which is sad. I'm no duck expert, but aren't ducks usually found in groups or what are called rafts? This lady  flies  or paddles in all by herself close to the dock, I think hoping for food. 

Now Pete is not interested in ducks, but Maddie is. Every time this lady comes by, she catches Maddie's attention. Maddie must have been feeling ambitious that weekend because in she goes, swimming after the duck.

I don't worry Maddie will catch the duck because she isn't a very fast swimmer, nor can she fly. like the duck can. Of course the duck paddles away, and Maddie swims back to the dock.

But that weekend no sooner had the duck swam away and Maddie had come out of the water than the duck swam right back in front of where Maddie was on the dock.

There goes Maddie again. And this happened 5 times.

Surely that duck was just teasing Maddie.

Then a friend of the duck paddled up, joined her, and they swam off together. I was happy she didn’t have to be alone. And we saw her another weekend with 2 more friends. 

A few minutes later a cormorant arrived and jumped up on the swim raft. The swim raft is disgusting right now. There is SO much bird poop on it. The only one who likes it is Pete, because he likes to climb up (he can climb a ladder without help) and roll in the duck poop. YUK! 

It's a good thing Pete has to swim back to shore so he can wash off any duck poop clinging to his fur.

There's also a Mom merganser with 6 fully grown babies who come by often also. This was a few weeks back, when the swim raft wasn't so disgusting.

The showers were off in the distance this particular afternoon, and we never got the rain. But someplace nearby did get it. They were lucky.

Here's another time when mom merganser and her babies swam by. Maddie knows it's not worth going after them as they dive and take off.

And you might remember my husband has a fishing boat. He leaves it at a marina down at the coast, which is 30 minutes south-east of us. We don't leave it in the water, but the marina has a big field that in the summer you can park your boat in. It is much much less expensive to do this than to get a slip to keep your boat in the water. And getting a mooring is practically impossible. I think there is an 8 year wait for one.

(FYI in case you aren't familiar with boating- A slip means you keep your boat tied up to a dock in the water, and a mooring is a floating ball that is anchored in place. If you have a mooring you can hook your boat up to this. You just need a small inflatable boat or row boat to get out to your boat.)

My husband's business closes at noon on Fridays during the summer, so we’d motor out in the afternoon if the weather cooperated.  It is nice on the water on most Friday afternoons as there are not so many boats out. Plus we've been spending time over the weekend at my MIL's house, so other than on Fridays, our boating time has been limited.

When it's not crazy hot we bring the dogs along as they like boating. They especially like fishing too.

A couple of Fridays ago the light was just perfect to get some nice photos.

We also saw this band of pirates in training. The flag isn't showing very well here, (argh ye mateys) but it was a pirate flag.

It was an exciting day on the water. To get out to the ocean we have to motor down the Piscataqua (Piss-Kah-Tah-Quah) River. The Maine side of the river is residential, but the New Hampshire side is mostly business. As we turned a corner we came across this large tanker bringing gas or oil up the river.

You can see how big it was compared to boats around the size of ours. 

And let me end this already very long post with one last photo. Have a great end of your week.