The family vacation. That’s where I went with this blog back in August, and that’s why the trip to the cabin at Peterson Falls is so memorable. The family.

In the 60s and 70s, the family I belonged to - traveled with - was Mom, Dad and Pat. By 1996, that had expanded to include my kids, and my older sister and her family.

When my sisters and I had gone camping earlier that year, we discovered a wonderful place called River Falls Outdoors, which, in addition to renting canoeing and rafting equipment, rented a quaint A-frame cabin overlooking Peterson Falls. We thought at the time, wouldn’t it be awesome to rent the cabin for a weekend and bring up the whole family. I have those kinds of fantasies a lot, but they rarely come to fruition. This time, though, we made it happen.

The Friday after Labor Day we all converged at the cabin on the Montreal River. My boyfriend Himey, my kids Nick and Val, Pat, Judy, her husband Claude, their two granddaughters, and my mom. I would have never thought that this collection of people would get along so well in close quarters for an entire weekend. We had a hoot!

Instead of sharing with you what we did, where we went, what we saw, let me tell you about the accidents. In no particular order.

I can tolerate most insects, rodents and even snakes. There is one thing which I cannot tolerate, one creature which God put on this earth which completely freaks me out.

We were at Black River Harbor on Lake Superior and the kids were wading in the shallow water. Judy’s granddaughter, Raquel, a year or so older than Val, pulled her foot out of the water.

“What is that?” she asked pointing to what appeared to be grains of long white rice moving around on her foot.

I took one look and let out a blood-curdling scream. Leaches! She had stuck her foot into what must have been a whole bed of leach babies and they all decided to have a party on her lower appendage.

My screams brought people running from all over the beach. I was pretty embarrassed by my over-reaction, but when the good Samaritans saw what the problem was, they all seemed to totally understand where I was coming from.

We got all the leaches off and Raquel suffered no ill effects.

Tomorrow night you will get to read how two others in our group met similar fates.