Flying West to Maddens

July 8, 2012 -- We got up for an early breakfast and marveled at the cool, dry air in Michigan.  Clearly, this is a great place to be in summer. Marcia and I were among the first in the dining room, and the previous evening's wedding was clearly over.  We could have eaten on the patio, but chose to sit inside, right where we were the night before.  Mosquitoes, you know?  Even in the mornings up here

After checking out, we simply reversed course and walked back up the road to the KMCD airport.  It was perhaps a 20-minute walk, and not at  all unpleasant.  Well, we did have to step around the horse poop on the road. That's the downside of having no motorized vehicles on the island.

As we took off to the east, I did a slow right turn over the town and the coastline.  That enabled us to take a couple of pictures of the village and port, as well as a shot of the Inn at Stonecliffe with its large lawn.  You can almost see the Adirondack chairs out there, waiting for someone to come and relax in them.

We flew almost due west, first over the lake and then over land.  Not much to see -- lots of trees, lots of lakes, some logging roads, but not much sign of many people in northern Michigan and Minnesota.  I saw several perfectly round lakes filled with bright blue water -- meteor craters?

We landed at Brainerd Regional Airport (KBRD), behind a regional Delta jet.  Actually, we did a 360 about five miles from the field to let him get in ahead of us.  We didn't really need the 7000 feet of runway, but it was a surprise to find commercial flights coming into a field with no control tower.  Well, it's not too busy at Brainerd and everyone seems to manage nicely.

The FBO staff could not have been nicer, racing around to help us and the passengers coming off several other GA airplanes. A Lear arrived right behind us, and a big Citation was already on the ground when we parked.  The young man loaded all our many bags on his golf cart and put them out by the pick up zone while we were still tying down the plane.  There is a restaurant in the terminal, and we might have had lunch if we'd known the Maddens shuttle would be so long coming for us. The windows look out on the ramp and provide endless visual entertainment for people at the ten or so tables. One of the patrons said they still get three commercial flights per day at this airport, down from five per day, but that Delta would like to drop service to Brainerd altogether.

A young fellow picked us up in the Maddens van and we soon covered the twenty-minute drive.  He pointed out the rail yard and the old paper mill, now owned by a Dutch company, as we went.  The land is flat.  Small, neat houses, non-chain stores, wide streets, little traffic -- in other words, a place where people are from -- that's what Brainerd looks like.

We arrived at the Lodge at Maddens, with Marcia quickly placing all the buildings and facilities she had been looking at on maps and in brochures over the past months. She soon met and greeted like old friends Sharon Kuehl and other staff with whom she had been trading email messages with for weeks.

Marinn, Darren and Case had arrived about an hour before us. Their room however was not yet ready, so we killed time with them as Case played on the shuffleboard court and near the beach behind the Lodge. Other reunion participants were in the area -- we knew from text messages -- and soon began arriving.We gathered and chatted on the deck outside the Lodge.

The whole point of this gathering, of course, is the reunion of the Carlson family.  Bob and Natalie have designed some colorful (in Swedish colors, of course) tee shirts to honor the occasion. They have them all packaged for each family, but we'll hand them out tomorrow.

 Tonight is a time for greeting and getting to know each other all over again.