Mush!

Our excitement this week was having the annual John Beargrease 400 mile sled dog race in our front yard. The race is the longest and most challenging sled dog race in the lower 48 states, with entrants from across the country and Canada. Sadly, we discovered that watching the race from our front deck was a non-event as the dogs raced across Poplar Lake in the middle of the night! Sled dog racing - at least from our house - isn't a spectator sport.

We decided to go down to Trail Center to see the dogs and mushers bed down for their required rest stop before their late (or early morning) departure. It was really interesting, the dogs were very quiet - of course, they'd were pretty tired after mushing all day. We were also surprised to see that they were also much smaller and much thinner than we expected, but some had some bounce left!

We took a couple of pictures, trying not to bother the dogs - who had only two things on their minds - dinner and a rest! I was interested to see that one musher had built a snow fort around his truck to shelter his dogs from the wind. Dinner is obviously not ready yet and the straw bale is destined to become dog beds.

The teams pulled out of Trail Center around midnight, ran up Poplar Lake to Gunflint Lake, across Gunflint and down to Loon and back down to Devil Track Lake. From there it was across to Sawbill, over to Finland and back to Duluth - about 400 miles in around 4 days. We were told that the dogs really enjoyed the good weather - temperatures ranging from a high around 19 above to a low around minus 15 with not a lot of wind and no new ice or snow during the race, just perfect powdery snow on the trails.

Winter canoe adventure

Since yesterday was such a nice day we decided to make our long delayed trip to Mt. Iron with last year's well used canoes. Just getting started was quite a process - first Mike had to dig them out of the snow banks down by the lake, then portage them up the hill through knee deep snow. The trailer had to be dug out of its snow bank and towed over to the drive, loaded, and tires filled with air, not to mention thawing out the hitch and the safety chain holes.

I really should have taken the camera along with us. Thanks to all the slush and sand and salt on the roads - by the time we arrived those canoes were not only "dead" but buried as well! Mike literally had to chip the straps out to get them off the trailer. What with the slush, ice and road salt we had our own ice cream freezer - just a trifle short of sugar!

We must have been the most popular attraction on the road. We had visions of people calling their friends to say "You won't believe what I just saw! A pickup towing a canoe trailer full of snow covered canoes!" By the time we got to Mt. Iron we felt we were drawing a crowd. Maybe there is a future in winter canoeing - sort of a cross between tobogganing and skiing?

Anyway, the old canoes are sold and the new canoes are on order to arrive by spring. Now all we have to do is clear a new path through the upper yard so we can re-park the trailer!

Siskinfinchpolls

It’s early morning, 26 below outside but warming up. Our digital thermometer remembers how cold it was (or how hot) in the past 24 hours. Last night the low temperature reading was 31 below. Someone is going to have to go out and fill the bird feeders as we'll have a rather hungry crowd later this a.m. Lin says that someone hung the finch feeder just out of her reach so I guess the someone filling the feeders will be me!

The birds are … grateful and enjoying our bounty. Yesterday we looked out the window and there were three jays on the garbage can corn feeder, three grosbeaks on the sunflower seed feeder, six siskinfinchpolls (pine siskins, assorted purple or gold finches and red polls – it’s really hard to tell them apart so we've settled on calling them siskinfinchpolls) on the thistle feeder, and a chickadee and a nuthatch on the millet seed feeder. On the ground underneath the feeders were more siskinfinchpolls and grosbeaks than we wanted to count! We have entirely too many dependents all of a sudden!

Sauna Furnace and Winter Fun

We finally found a gas sauna furnace. Now all we have to do this winter is hook it up and then find and install a thermostat and timer. Hopefully, it will be ready to go this Spring. Meanwhile a neighbor gave us a 25 year old snowmobile that only needed a few repairs.

If you look closely at the picture of the outfitting building you'll see tracks where the snowmobile has make it out on the lake. Looking at the sauna building you might notice that the snow is 3 feet

deep and the lack of tracks which might indicate that we haven't been inside to install the new sauna furnace. It's a good thing that Winter up here in the BWCAW will last for four more months. We promise that the sauna will be ready this Spring.