Friday, we drove to the farm to celebrate my mom’s birthday. That afternoon, Toph and I decided it was a good weekend to make the trip to Chicago we’d been considering. So, my mom agreed to keep the girls and Lucky Dog, who is technically, a girl.

Saturday morning, my dad, brother, and husband headed off to Cadillac to ice fish. I was going to pick Toph up there about 11am to head back to GR.

Traffic was fine and the roads were good. I made it to the shanty parking about 20 minutes early. I bundled up in my coat, gloves, and sunglasses and girded my proverbial loins for the brisk, i.e. bone chilling walk across the ice to the shanty (114 yards). As I walked along the path, I saw what looked like rather fresh tracks coming in off the lack, but assumed it was just one of the boys needing a pit stop.

The snowmobiles were flying around and I had to watch close to avoid them. Then I encountered two men setting tip ups. They were quite surprised to see someone walking across the lake. They don’t get many pedestrians out there and I sure wasn’t dressed for fishing.

As I got closer to the shanty, I began to feel ominous. The tracks still looked rather fresh, but it was hard to tell, so many tracks mixed together.

Imagine my surprise when I reached the shanty and it was locked. With a padlock. From the outside. I knocked anyway. Of course I knew they couldn’t be in there. But it just seemed impossible that I would walk all the way out there, in the cold, (and I don’t do cold) only to have them elsewhere.

You might be wondering where they might be. I didn’t have to wonder. I’d parked next to the Bronco. I knew they hadn’t left. So, if they hadn’t left and they weren’t in the shanty (and I knew they hadn’t fallen in, the padlock was on the outside), they were in the McDonald’s next to the parking spot warm and comfy and drinking coffee. I didn’t yell. I didn’t kick anything. I didn’t even set the shanty on fire (I didn’t have anything flamable.) Nope. I just turned around and trudged my frozen back side in past the tip ups, through the snowmobile racetrack, and over the hill of snow seperating the parking spot from the McD’s and waved at them through the window.

They assured me that they’d been watching for me. I did drive right past wehre they were sitting. My dad gave me his coffee. My brother gave me his seat. And my husband took me to Chicago.

Gotta say, it’s certainly one of my crazier fishing stories and I didn’t have to kill or skin anything. :)