Busy Week

I promised myself I wouldn't mention the "s" word again, but I have to say that it certainly made the first part of our annual trip to the food show in Duluth interesting! The road reports from Grand Marais to Duluth were good, so we decided to ignore the wet, nasty, white six inches of new "s-word" on Monday morning and go. The plow trucks hadn't been past yet so getting to Grand Marais was a bit of an adventure - Mike said he was proud of me as I only mentioned once that we were going down the road sort of sideways.

I always enjoy sampling things and picking out goodies for our outfitting trips at the food show, not to mention my new cleaning stuff shopping sweep through Duluth's big box stores. In the meantime, Mike gets to pick up all sorts of maintenance things... it's a bit of a break for us to get away and remember how much we like driving in traffic and waiting at stoplights. The trip home was wet, we had rain most of the way until, of course, we got back on the Gunflint Trail. Yup, more "s-word", but the plows had cleared the roadway so travel wasn't difficult. It's a big improvement over waiting at a "left turn yield on green" sign through two or three stop light intervals!

Then Mike had a committee meeting on Tuesday, I got to go to the BWCA Cooperators' meeting at the ranger station on Thursday - we were out and about more than usual! The new permit system seems to be pretty straightforward and I'm looking forward to testing it later this week.

The ground is slowly appearing as the white stuff receded - the rain we've had on and off this weekend has helped there - and we've seen about six inches of water at the edge of the lake on warm days. This cute little guy has been wandering around the house yard the last couple days - good thing grouse season is in the fall! The temporary fence is supposed to keep our bird dog from wandering off on a hunt and of course the grouse is inside the fence within the dog's area. It's easy to see why they call grouse "fools hens"!

Hints of Spring

Despite the fact that we still have knee-deep snow around
here, there are hints of spring starting to show up everywhere. The snow piles are shrinking, there's a bit of grass showing along their edges, and the mail lady reports that the skunks are coming out of hibernation - she's seen quite a few along the road this week. The red squirrels have been very active, and judging from the tracks, so have the snowshoe hares. "Beep Beep," the little owl, is still nearby and still calling for a friend.

The population around the bird feeders is changing - we're seeing quite a few new guests. There are juncos and purple finches and another bird I can't identify - and another new guest. The fox has been up on the porch several times looking in the windows and he's also been prowling around under the feeders. He's certainly a handsome fellow - if a lazy one - looking for a handout?

Fish!

Monday was absolutely gorgeous - warm, sunny - a perfect day to go fishing! Nice, easy snowmobile trip to the edge of the BWCA, nice half mile hike into a small lake, cooperative fish - a wonderful day! Finally we have the fish picture we promised in an earlier blog! You can see the sunshine - and shirtsleeves - and the beautiful lake trout.

Well, the trout tasted so good at dinner Monday night... and Tuesday was the last day of the trout season... and the forecast was for 1-2 inches of new snow - mostly flurries... so Mike and friends bundled up a bit, grabbed the tackle and gear, and off they went again for a mid-morning fishing trip.

They'd hardly gotten the sleds started and headed up the trail when someone pulled the zipper on the clouds. It started snowing hard. And then it snowed harder. And then the wind started blowing. One hour into the trip we had over two inches of new snow and visibility was down to a third of a mile if that. And it kept snowing.

The fish had been biting and "what's a little snow?" so... they kept fishing. By noon it was coming down at 2 inches per hour and blowing harder. By the time they decided that "a little snow" had turned into "a lot of snow" there was over 8 inches of new stuff on that nice easy hike into the BWCA... and it wasn't what you'd call an easy hike any more, more like a heavy slog, especially in wet snowmobile suits and parkas. Crossing the lake to the landing where they left the sleds was an adventure with blowing snow and visibility minimal. Digging the sleds out of the new snowbanks and getting them started was another adventure.

The fish are delicious, the winter trout season is over - and it's still SNOWING! As of this morning we had at least 14 inches of new snow (it's hard to tell because it's blowing too and there are a lot of drifts) and it's still coming down in big wet flakes. Mike and his snowblower are getting a getting a real workout clearing the driveway and a path to the house, the siskenfinchpolls are hitting the feeders in dozens and Lin is just as glad to be inside.