Virginia!

Well, we took advantage of fair weather last week and hauled a load of canoes over to Spring Creek and sold them. Lin got her annual shopping trip to Virginia - several of her favorite stores have branches there - and Mike got his annual trip to L and M Fleet. So we're pretty well stocked for the winter with new jeans, flannel shirts and odds and ends. Also - we got ourselves out of Cook County for the first time since the food show in Duluth back in April. Cook County is a beautiful place and we love living here, but it was nice to see some different scenery for a change.

We met a man at the day-old bread store who was stocking up with four loaves of bread and explaining that he had to plan his shopping because he lives so far out in the woods. He looked at our cart full of bread and said "You must have a deep freeze? That's really stocking up!" We weren't sure he believed us when we told him we really live "in the woods" - thirty miles from town!

Mike celebrated the last day of trout season by taking his pole and his one left over crawler and walking in to Birch Lake. He came home with a limit of trout. There aren't many places where you can take one nightcrawler on a fishing trip and come home with a limit of trout!

The weather the last several days has been great. Mike's gotten some painting done and Lin's been collecting pine needles for her baskets. The cool, damp summer apparently meant that the pine needles got more water and they're unusually long this year - say six or seven inches instead of five or six. The longer needles make basket weaving easier, so there's at least one upside (besides having no campfire restrictions) for a damp summer!