Tales from Ambajejus Lake

Our staff retreat was…interesting; enjoyable, but weather ridden and sleep deprived. The camp was 2½ hours from the office. I, suffering from a rather sleepless night (only 4 hours under my belt), rode up with Deb and forgot to take some Dramamine (and I should know better being the horribly carsick type – but it wasn’t so bad, just mildly icky feeling). The road to the camp (I wish I had taken pictures) was a loooooong and winding dirt road that crossed over a well traveled, paved, logging road, then continued on for another loooooong time. It was practically a one lane road that everyone seemed to fly down at breakneck speed. But once we reached the camp, that road was worth the travel!

The view of Mt. Katahdin was phenomenal from the deck of Marcia’s camp!

We sat; we enjoyed the scenery; we had a mini-staff meeting while sitting in camp chairs around the fire pit; we played games (Scrabble got pretty brutal!)

We celebrated Deb’s 50th!

We ate; we drank; we swam; my chief of staff attempted to teach my boss how to fly fish.

Marcia hit a duck with a rock – not intentionally! It was quacking like mad and she was trying to shoo it away (since they come in and poo on her beach), so she started throwing little rocks into the water to scare it off, only her aim was better than she thought and she hit it. Poor duck! It flew off. Marcia was mortified! She felt so bad. Thursday night, rather early early Friday morning (2:00-ish), the wind came up so strong that I had to abandon the tent for the living room couch. I had put a tarp over the tent because it had rained a little earlier and with the wind, it sounded like I was sleeping in a potato chip bag that someone was viciously crinkling! It was horrible! And after about 4 hours sleep, I awoke at 6:00 – wide awake! 48 hours with 8 hours sleep, does not a coherent Tiffany make. But Friday was beautiful! The sun shone bright and the sky was virtually cloud-free all day. Then, just after dinner, I looked down the lake to see the most ferocious black clouds creeping across the sky, so I put the tarp (crinkly potato chip bag) back on the tent. Within an hour, the lightning started, then the camp-shaking thunder rumbled and rain began pelting down. When I looked outside, the trees were beginning to blow almost sideways! I looked over at my tent to see my tarp flying, attached only by one mere string! Then the tent itself began to lift off the ground, pins pulled from the dirt. Roger, Deb and I ran out into the pouring rain to grab all of my stuff from the tent before it got totally soaked and take down the tent, as well, before it blew off down the lake!
Talk about the craziest of weather. It was like a mini-hurricane! Everything was so soaked Saturday morning that I threw it all into trash bags and left it till I got home. What a mess! And so ends my adventures at Ambajejus Lake.