Black Friday

Black Friday was suppose to involve an early morning trip to the Clinic in Grand Marais for Lin and an afternoon of snacking on leftover turkey for me. Instead we started with 6 inches of new snow and an almost 40 degree drop in temperatures.  And then things went down hill!

I used our walk behind snow blower to open the driveway and started to get the 4x4 truck ready for our trip into town. By 8:30 the county snowplow had only managed to open one lane of the Gunflint Trail -- the lane coming from town.  The open lane was completely iced over the snow on the unplowed lane was more than I wanted to drive over in Lin's car.

The next surprise was to finding that the truck's thermostat was stuck closed and that the truck was overheating before we even reached the end of our driveway. We decided to reschedule the Clinic visit and to stay home. After a quick Internet search I discovered that unlike most vehicles the thermostat on the Dakota is on the bottom of the engine and that the shop rate for replacing this thermostat ( in a heated garage ) and bleeding the air out of the radiator is 1.5 HOURS!

Instead of snacking on turkey, I decided to open a path down to the lodging unit that we are keeping open this winter.  I am still a little nervous about having water turned this building and want to check often to make sure the heat is on and everything is OK.

Today I am sore from moving snow but I have been sharing turkey scraps with a pair of Canadian Jays. Wishing everyone a great holiday season filled with family and friends,
Lin and Mike

Whitefish



First Ice on Poplar Lake -- Nov. 16th




Lin and I have returned from our annual family visit/trip and have started to settle into another period of  "off-season" retirement. We came home to find that the smaller lakes like Swamp were glazed over while the larger lakes like Poplar were still open.

Earlier this week I decided to help a neighbor who was netting Whitefish clean his catch . On the first day seven whitefish were picked from his net. Five of the seven fish were headless and the net was holed in several spots. The next day there were six fish in the net and all of them were headless.

The otter family that entertained cabin guests over the summer seem to have acquired a fondness for fish heads! A few of the finished fillets were definitely shorter than they should of been. We put the fish heads that remained after cleaning the fish out for the otters -- believing that nothing should be wasted and wanting to share the fish with the otters.  OK, maybe we hoped that the otters would get full and not hit the net for a while.

This morning we had 3/4s of an inch of ice on Poplar.  After breaking ice for about an hour we agreed to call an end to netting for this year. There were six fish in the net and they were all whole! The otters gave up fishing through the ice about a day before we did. Smart Otters.