Earlier on this blog, I shared a post about my initiation into boating on “the Big Lake” and my incremental method for learning to overcome my fears (“The Quest for Competency”). In that post, I spoke of working up the courage to go just a little further, a little further, up the shoreline each trip until I finally reached the north end of Basswood Island and an historic landmark in the Apostle Islands that has been drawing boaters, artists, and apparently newly-weds, for a very long time, a place known as “Honeymoon Rock.”
There, at the spot which earned its name as a popular excursion destination for newly-weds from Bayfield’s Island View Hotel (which has long since burned down) I’d sit drifting quietly in the Little Dipper, engine off, drinking coffee basking in the beauty and the glow of overcoming my fears. So much coffee was sipped at that spot waiting for sunrise, waiting for the lake fog to lift, or just taking in the solitude, we jokingly began calling it the “Honeymoon Rock Coffeehouse.”
It has become a landmark in my journey, one of those touchstones in life that seem like an anchor holding you to the earth. So, as we end this week in the "Little Dipper” blog, I invite you to grab a cup of coffee, put your feet up on the gunnels (or the coffee table), and click the short video at the top of this post (turn the sound up and make it full screen for the full effect). You’ve got a table for one, no waiting, at the Honeymoon Rock Coffeehouse.
Thank you for joining me on the journey.
And here are a few more Honeymoon Rock photos to enjoy while you have a second cup.
(all photographs - except the postcard - by Jeff Rennicke)
One Table, No Waiting