Memorial Weekend's coming!

What a perfect morning! One of our guests (Thanks, Carl) snapped this photo of his cabin bright and early - the lake was still and clear as glass... perfect weather for canoeing, fishing, or just relaxing at Rockwood! We're full for the holiday weekend, so it's been a very busy week... our guests have been exploring the hiking trails, relaxing, canoeing, and generally enjoying watching Spring arrive.

Open Water!

We woke this morning to a wonderful sound... water lapping against the dock in front of our house! The past several days we've been enjoying what I call the "ice tea" noise - little chunks of ice rattling against the edge of the "big freeze" - sounds just like ice in a glass of iced tea!

We had a little bit of wind last night and it cleared all the ice cubes away... we have open water! The ducks will be so pleased! I can't tell whether it's open all the way across, but our bay looks like its summer self again!

Happy May Day!

It's melting! We actually have a few feet of water along the shore! Spring is getting close!

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?