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	August 20th through 26th, 2018

Last week started a season's end trend of not-as-hot weather. Absent were the Sunny, mid 80's °F. Present were clouds and the 70's°F. Still, the sun did peak out on occasion and, while the lake temperature slipped, it remained above 70°F. Evenings were especially pleasant as the sound of loons washed up on the shore and campfires took the chill out of the night air.

This year, the hot and wet-then-dry weather has resulted in a fine crop of milkweed pods up and down most roadsides along the lake. The monarchs will be happy.

The last ski show of 2018 was held last Wednesday. The season ended with a pyramid-tastic display of quality aquaplaning.

As the sun set on Lake Lucerne's last ski show, Crandon Water Shows had one more local event to stage; Footstock.

At Peshtigo Lake, just North of Crandon, the Footstock grounds were ready to go by Friday.

On Saturday, the Footstock viewing area swelled with canopies and spectators.

The National Barefooting Championship is in reality an international event. This year there were several entries from Australia, Canada and even Missouri.

Our favorite part of this discalced competition are the crashes. Getting a perfect shot of the splashy mayhem requires a fast camera, a faster shutter finger, and lots of luck.

This year, we didn't get as many pictures of this nature as we would have liked. There wasn't very much sun and light is a very important element in getting a good crash picture. That, and part of the knottlane team was recruited to be a video cameraman in one of the three boats to get a feed out on live TV for the entire tournament (They saved the feed. I'll get a link up on the front page of knottlane). Another team member was tapped as a boat judge for much of the two day event.

In addition to the figure eight barefooting, there was a new demonstration event this year. The three tier pyramid figure eight endurance run between the Crandon Water Shows team and the Twin Bridge Water Ski team was not to be missed.

As it turned out, the boat was a little under-powered to get all 12 team members up. The ones that did make it on the second try, formed a two tier and the contest was on. We are not sure about a three tier, but a two tier is not affected by the waves of a figure eight very much. The speed was dropped by one or two miles-per-hour with each completed eight in a desperate attempt to tire out the skiers. At 12 mph, the Crandon top got squirrelly and fell, making the talented and hilariously trash talking Twin Bridge team the winner. Huzzah!

Being bounced by waves while sitting on an egg crate behind the driver filming barefooters for 17 hours is not as great and glamorous as you'd think. Fantastic tournament, though. Peter Fleck won the Open Division for the 78th time. It rained during the morning on Sunday.

Even though the show skiing season and Footstock are over, there's still several weeks of amateur skiing left. Add that to swimming, fishing, golf, Rafto!, and such and you'll find there's plenty of Summer activity left to fuel the delusions of the Fall denialists. Still, the growing color in some of those trees is disturbing.<br><br><br>-Nemo, as seen on TV!

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