Where’s the dishwasher? Where’s the washer and dryer? Where’s the central air conditioning? What do you mean they don’t deliver the New York Times? No one told us about the elks head in the great room. No one told us about the dvd player or the crickety floor boards or the morning loons. What else haven’t they told us and what else haven’t we discovered? I still think that the houses on either side of us were intended to be our rental and not this campy-oh-so-campy joint we find ourselves in. What am I complaining about? If anything, it reminds me of our old camp where curtains took the place of doors and when you cleaned the stove you had to remove the heating element if you wanted to clean the aluminum pan that surrounded it. I can almost hear gramps calling out that the cakes are just about ready. I wonder now if the object of my desire in those days was the maple syrup and not the pancakes. Hey, Nan! Think this place has a griddle? I’m happy to know that the house we’re staying in has more than three feet between this house and the adjoining houses. You can dream as loudly as you like and not worry about being awakened by someone farting in their sleep in the house an arms length outside your bedroom window. Just to be safe, we drove over to the Shearer’s last night under the cover of darkness to see if there were any out of state license plates in their driveway. There weren’t. In fact, as best we could remember, the cars parked there belonged to them. Now that we’ve seen other places we may not go back to the Shearer’s for the abovementioned reasons. There is a lot to be said for privacy and there was none at the Shearer’s. There is more here but we’re surrounded by family whose eyes and ears are tuned to our every move. The fact that I am up at 5 in the morning has probably not gone unnoticed. Evan and Noah are having none of it. Evan gave his rousing approval by raising his fists in the air and shouting something I can’t remember as I sit here beneath the elks head just 12 hours later. The words weren’t important but the sentiment was. The boys, in all their adolescent splendor, were no sooner on the property when they were in the water. I don’t think they bothered to put on their swim trunks first. Who cares. The muck and murkiness of Harris Bay has been replaced by sand and stone the likes of which are certainly reminiscent of the place on Bean Road. Ah, the joy. I too will throw myself off the end of the dock when the moment is right. I would never do that with the scurrilous swill lurking just beneath the surface in Harris Bay. Were it not for the lack of amenities mentioned in the ad, I might go so far as to say that the place is lovely. Did I tell you that it rained the first day? We were delighted by seeing the deer feeding in the field near the Shearer’s house as darkness descended on Harris Bay last evening. Nancy says that she will miss her morning walks down that road and seeing the many types of birds that seem to flourish there. We were amused by the number of little frogs in the road in the wake of the heavy rains and we even stopped to let the boys get out of the car long enough to get a closer look. They got back in the car quickly as cars traveling in the opposite direction were nearly upon us and wondering, no doubt, what all the commotion was about. She is not unhappy with the place here but it is, and we both acknowledge, not as advertised. The darkness of the night has given way to a very pleasant morning light. As I look out the window from where I sit, there is a light and choppy fog on the water. I can hear those pesky bass boats racing up and down the lake to destinations unknown out on the bay just beyond the island and out of sight in this inlet. You can see more of the lake as you stand at the end of the dock but I have no such luxury as I sit here behind a desk. The view is not so bad when you consider that we were not entirely sure that the house we rented was even really on the water. It is no surprise that the boathouse was not more clearly in sight in the pictures presented on the web. I told Nancy that it will require great effort to take the kinds of pictures that I want to take and in the numbers that I expect to take them while excluding the boathouse. It is such an eyesore. Views of the cabin did not highlight the front door which we’ve elected not to use as it is one of the more unappealing aspects of the camp. Nonetheless, the morning after has me thinking a lot less about the absence of amenities and more about the week ahead. That is perhaps as it should be. Nancy’s first words to me this morning as she stood over my shoulder looking out onto the water were, “no sparkles.” Welcome to paradise.