A Day At The Lake With The Roden’s

As I’ve posted previously our daughter, Kathy, and her three girls were here for their annual visit from the San Antonio, TX area.  The typical visit includes playing at the lake, a trip to Pigeon Forge for a fun day (Wonderworks this time), and a picnic in Cades Cove.  After discussing it with her kids, Kathy realized that what they really wanted from the picnic was a hamburger cookout with the special potatoes fried in a big cast iron pot so we decided it would be a lot easier to do this at the lake than haul everything up to the mountains.

Kathy invited some local friends (used to be our neighbors) who have a pontoon boat and two teenage boys (their son and nephew) for the day and they used both the pontoon and our jet ski to pull the seven kids on tubes. This is Kathy’s group coming into the dock for gas.

The pontoon is actually a tri-toon with a 250hp motor and it will perform almost like a regular boat when it comes to pulling tubes, skiers, etc. so they were able to give the kids some pretty good thrill rides and here are some shots of them.

And the shots of the day were from a video as the tube went across the wake from a big cruiser - teenage boys live for this.

This is the pontoon group coming in for supper.

Needless to say, the kids were pretty tired and plenty hungry - this is the potatoes cooking (they get crispier) and the kids eating the burgers, dogs, and melon we had with the potatoes. 

Besides the potatoes, the other special request was for real lemonade and I used the recipe for The Best Lemonade Ever from Allrecipes.

Ingredients:

1¾ cups white sugar

8 cups water

1½ cups lemon juice

Directions:

1. In a small saucepan, combine sugar and 1 cup water. Bring to boil and stir to dissolve sugar. Allow to cool to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate until chilled.

2. Remove seeds from lemon juice, but leave pulp. In pitcher, stir together chilled syrup, lemon juice and remaining 7 cups water.

Notes: 

1. I made double this recipe and made it a little stronger by only adding enough water to fill a one gallon jug.   

2. I added 1-2 lemons worth of slices to it.

Riley, who had requested it said it was indeed the best lemonade ever.  It was a fun day on the lake at Almost Heaven South.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

8/2/14 meal date