Gosh, Island Girl, what a great thread. I've loved reading the replies and have learned some more new things already!
Across 3 years of living here full time and 20 years of vacationing here, here's some of the things I've learned at the lake:
The beauty of the place (the lake, woods, stone walls, etc.) jumps out at you at unexpected times, filling your heart with contentment and especially wonder at how it was all fashioned over the years
There is a small home town feel to its towns where people know you and treat you courteously and with kindness and generosity, including merchants that will sometimes just give you a length of wire instead of making you pay for it
If you don’t close the windows when you go out, that there will be a rain storm
Coffee out at the picnic table or on the deck or down at the dock tastes better
There is a freshness to the air that makes you take deep breaths
There will inevitably be a loon somewhere, sometime, welcoming you back or saying goodbye with that haunting tremolo
You don’t need a TV or a VCR here to be entertained - there's cards, board games or like Jeffk says, just sitting and drinking in the beauty of our lake and land
If you take a spoon and put small dobs of coffe ice cream and chocolate ice cream in a sugar cone (Keebler’s sugar cones are the best), then top with a scoop of both, you have New England’s favorite flavor – mocha - and an ice cream cone that lasts to the very end!
Grocery store empty plastic bags are great for dirty clothes and underwear, wet bathing suits, garbage until there’s enough to put in the trash can or dumpster (assuming you have no disposal), transporting things here and there, etc. Also, if you fold one lengthwise and then crosswise a couple of times, they take up little space and you can store them in a fully opened bag in the closet.
If it’s a humid summer, you can take a bunch of white chalk and tie a string around the bunch about halfway down the middle and then hang it in the clothes closet, it will keep your clothes from getting damp and smelling musty.
The 100% surefire way to remove marks on a painted wall is Mr. Clean’s Magic Eraser found in grocery cleaning products aisle (after a week’s vacation, marks are bound to occur and this is great.)
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