Spring has arrived!

The ice is out, the flowers are (starting) to bloom - mostly dandelions, plus those odd purple things that look vaguely familiar, and this morning the white shrub by the house driveway burst into bloom! The rain we got the last couple days has really helped - grass is growing, leaves are popping - and I've been hearing about a few walleyes and northern getting caught.

And our friends Carl and Mike are here helping Mike - thanks, guys!

Endangered Species...

If you ever wondered how some critters make it on to the official Endangered Species List... well, I guess this goes a ways to explain it! There must be well over a thousand trees within fifty yards of this busy bird and surely half of them have more insect life than this treated power relay pole? Our intelligence-challenged friend here has been pecking away at this pole on and off all week.


In the meantime, his mate has been equally busy in a big old birch behind Cabin 4; so far she's got three and a half nesting holes made and she's spent the week pecking away inside the tree. We need a "Pileated Pod" or something to film the life cycle of our family of pileated woodpeckers, don't we?


Our loon has been busy today greeting our guests and escorting them across the bay towards their portages. Nice to have loons calling again!

ICE OUT!

When we came home from our annual "see how many things the resort needs that you can cram into a Chevy Impala" trip today... the ice was gone! We have WAVES! No sunshine, at least not this evening... but the waves are beautiful!

Motion, music and melting

The ice is breaking up! It's moving around the lake in big chunks - one minute the canoe launch is all iced in as it is now, come back in 15 minutes and the ice has moved somewhere else, leaving a little pile of long thin crystals of ice piled on the shore. Another 20 minutes - here it is back again!

One of the neat things about this crystal ice is that as the wind blows against the edge, it makes a sound like ice rattling in a glass - this is one of the "sounds of fall" as the ice forms and an even better "sound of spring" as it disappears!

We've been working hard the past week - the water is on in all the cabins and bunkrooms, the canoes are out in the yard where they belong, cleaning is underway, tree planting is underway, - work season is UNDERWAY! :)

Mike and I drove up to the Iron Lake Campground Sunday - no ice to be seen on Iron Lake! There were, however, more moose tracks in the campground and on up the Old Gunflint Trail than I've seen in a long time - lots and lots and LOTS of moose tracks! There's even one wandering past Rockwood the last day or so!

Beautiful Day

Gorgeous, sunny day today - windy though, so not exactly warm. Mike saw a couple black and white ducks enjoying the open water in front of outfitting this morning, I wasn't so lucky, but isn't it beautiful? I agree, it would be nicer if it were all blue rather than blue and ice, but ...

I've been putting stuff together for cabins, Mike's been working on the water system - we have water in the apartment/laundry room now! Fishing opener is coming fast!