If you're looking for something fun to do on Saturday, consider taking a trip to Cabot Village for the annual Apple Pie Festival at the school gymnasium. For details, click on the poster on the right. While you're there, take a walk in back of the gym towards the school house to see the beginnings of the new performing arts center being built there. The campus at Cabot School continues to grow. There has recently been a wood chip heating facility installed for the school, too.

I received this great photo from the Pat and George Parizo on Sandy Beach Road. This shot was taken about a week ago, late in the afternoon, looking east from the Parizo's home. Any wonder folks stay at the pond as long as possible in the fall? And each spring folks are just as anxious to get back here to watch the loons and ducks arrive and the geese that make this a stop-over point as they head north. There's always something interesting happening on the pond.

Today has been a bit cooler, but the sunshine is bright. We've had quite a lot of wind, so many of the leaves are down now, making walking in the woods great fun. Very noisy, but fun. Here at our house we are getting a different view towards the pond now the leaves are off many of the trees. Each year the trees grow taller between us and the view of the pond, but with the leaves off we can still see the water and some of the cottages on the east shore.

I think I've mentioned before that there are many more year around residents at the pond than when Fred and I first came to the pond to live in 1978. Then we could count on one hand the lights on the pond after deer hunting season was over. There always used to be a few that turned their summer cottages into "deer camp" for a few days each November. George Karnady was one on our road, and Jules Chatot on Sandy Beach Road. George would arrive early and then one by one, the guys would drift in, rifles in hand, usually wearing their orange vests, heavy Woolrich pants and insulated boots, and would begin unloading coolers, sleeping bags, and groceries. George always had a few appropriate signs posted signaling there were hunters in residence. And we'd often see them emerging from their favorite hunting grounds on the hillside above W. Shore Road.

There were others - Bill Ward had a camp high on the hill east of Rt. 2. I don't think Homer Fitts did much hunting, but he always had hunters around and I think they joined forces with Bill Ward. Walter Ruf was a hunter, too - I remember the fall someone said Walter had shot a "five-legged deer" - turned out he took out one of the legs on his dining room table when he was cleaning his rifle. I expect those guys could fill a couple books with wild tales about their deer camp days at Joe's Pond.

There probably are hunters who stay at the pond for hunting season now, but we don't hear much about them. A lot of the land around us is posted, so we don't see the hunters that we used to, either. Now quite a few of our Joe's Ponders leave when the weather begins to get cold, but come back for the holidays. With any luck they can ski or snowmobile if they wish, but whatever the weather/snow conditions, they enjoy coming "home" to the pond for the holidays. They can do that because many of them have renovated their cottages or rebuilt them as year around homes. We also have a lot of people who make Joe's Pond their home and if they leave at all during the winter, it's only for a week or two. Fred and I fit into the group that enjoys staying put during the winter months. That's a pretty big group, too. We figure somebody's gotta stay around to set up the Ice-Out Contest flag, monitor it, and sell tickets!