Our Indiana Connections Continue...

We live about 30 miles from Madisonville, LA which hosts a magnificent Wooden Boat Festival each year. This is always a fun event because it focuses on water activities, wooden boats, and has a real family orientation (although you don't really need many family connections to just go there and drink beer!). This year we went and met up with Milana and Tracy who were hosting friends, Danny and Sherrie Johnson from Indiana. The weather wasn't exactly cooperative, but worked out that we were all able to do most of what we came to the festival for.

After looking at all of the food and craft booths, we hooked up with Milana & Tracy's crew and boarded the Robert E. Lee party boat which was brought to the Madisonville wall by Capt. Donnie Weiss. The Weiss's hosted a really nice party and provided riverside seats for the festival's fabricated boat race. In this race contestant teams have two days to construct a wooden boat that team members launch in the river and sail and paddle over a course to claim victory. Of the approximately 18 boats that were launched, about 12 actually completed the race with about a half-dozen sinking sometime between the launch and the start of the race. After the race we left the boat and wandered over to one of the band stages to listen to some music. The band was really good, but it started to rain and Jane & Larry decided that it was time to head home. However, before we left we invited Danny & Sherrie to join us for dinner at our place in Florida when they come over for Danny's graduation at the Pensacola Naval Air Station in a few days. It turned out to be a really small world as Danny's parents were flying in from Detroit Lakes, MN to attend the ceremony which was where Larry was stationed for 5 years at the White Earth Indian Reservation. We all got together and talked just about everything including Larry & Jane's motorcycle trip through MN last year, ice fishing, Water Carnival, Lake Sallie, and even lutefisk! It was a real hoot. We had a really wonderful time and Larry's shrimp fettuccine and black bean dip, and Jane's Bavarian cream were real hits. We parted for the evening, but we are all pretty sure that we will run into each other again in the future.