Boreal Access

After two days of having somewhat spring-like weather, my tulips are coming up! The blooms are out of the stems, but haven’t opened up. I’m hoping by this weekend they might actually bloom. I didn’t take a picture of them so I hopefully won’t jinx them! Wish me luck!

There are more and more signs of spring around here even if it still doesn’t really feel like it. My bleeding hearts, peonies and hastas have shoots at ground level. The bleeding hearts and peonies didn’t look so good last summer so I am hoping the fact that they survived the winter is a good sign.

One of the other real signs of spring is the sound of the Peepers in the ponds and swamps. When we lived in Duluth, we had a spring pond at the end of our driveway and I loved the sound so much that I would open the windows at night and just to hear them. There were times when the peeping was so loud that Mark couldn’t fall asleep and would close the window. I think next summer we’re going to have to dig a pond closer to the house so in two years I can listen to the peepers.

Hopefully the weather will be nice this weekend. We have to finish our spring cleaning around the yard to get ready for the annual “May Birthday’s” party. Both Mark and I have our birthdays this month, mine on Saturday and Mark’s next Thursday. Plus we know of so many other people with May birthdays that when we moved we decided to have a bash the Saturday of Memorial Weekend. If you are feeling up to an adventure…come on over. It’s BYOB and if you don’t want to drive home, it’s BYO Sleeping Bag too. If you are thinking of it, DO NOT take the south side of the Camp 20 Road, you are going to get stuck. I have also heard that the burn on the north end of the Camp 20 Road is really soft, so your best route is to take County Road 60 to Camp 20 Road, head north and take the North side of the moose loop to get here. If you are on ATV, take whichever way you want. We would love to see you, the more the merrier!

We actually had a spring-like day yesterday. Temperatures were in the 50’s and the sun was out. The wind was a bit on the brisk and strong side, but it sure was nice to see the sun.

I stayed in town last night since I had a late work meeting. Thankfully I had made arrangements with Julie to stay with her and Jess, as the meeting didn’t get over until nearly 9:30. I spoke with Mark and he had a busy day hauling dirt, running into town to pick up dog food and hauling more dirt. When we talked last night around 9:45, he was just getting eat something before going to bed. I’m not sure what’s on his agenda for today, but I’m guessing it’s hauling more dirt. It won’t be long before Stan takes the excavator back so Mark’s making good use of it while it’s still in his possession.

Time to get showered and ready for work. Have a great day everyone!

We have freedom from a corded phone! Yesterday we purchased a Dock and Talk, a cell phone docking station that connects to a cordless phone and turns your cell phone into the cordless! I stopped at Buck’s Radio Shack today to upgrade Mark’s phone and saw they had one on the shelf. Manager Brad said he had ordered one for a customer and one to have for sale on the shelf and they came in on Monday. Well, they didn’t have the one on the shelf for long. While it’s not cheap ($250), it’s great to have a cordless phone again, which we haven’t had at home for almost four years! It’s almost as exciting as getting our batteries hooked up and having real lights. As I have said before, simple life/simple pleasures.

The number that we have been using on the website will now be our “home phone” and will be kept hooked up. Mark will keep his cell number and I have a new phone and number. Don’t ask me what it is right now, all I know is that it starts with “370″. We are still at the mercy of a cell signal so we may not always be available and we will shut the power off to the units at night and while we are not home.

The first phone call was to Julie just to see if it worked and the second one was to Duane Ege. One of our cable connections from the antenna to the cell phone went bad and one phone call to Duane on his way home from work. A  half hour of watching him work and viola, we were fixed. I had to call him to say “thank you, thank you, thank you”. Duane is almost like having a dad; if you need something and he’s around, he’ll drop what he’s doing and help you out. So for the second time in four days, thank you Duane, you sure turned a gray, wet, rainy, all-around dreary day into a sunny one for us!

Today’s first three words in the entry title is in reference to the news reports that I heard on MPR this morning: killer tornadoes in Missouri, wildfire in Florida and flooding in Maine. The last word is in reference to the weather Mark and I experienced while driving the last 2-1/2 miles home last night. It was snowing such big, wet, heavy flakes that I was almost going snow-blind. By the time we parked the truck and went into the cabin thankfully it had stopped. I thought it was a bit ironic hearing the different weather phenomenons happening around the country right now. It’s amazing tonight it was snowing like crazy and that just one year ago we were like Florida, worrying about the Ham Lake Fire coming our way. What a difference a year makes.

Mark has been busy moving dirt and dragging our road. I don’t know if the road is getting any better, but he is unearthing a bunch of rocks. He and Roxy made a couple of passes along the four mile stretch and it took him nearly all day. He said he would go a short distance and then have to get out of the truck to move the boulders off the road. He pulled up one so big he was 15 minutes late meeting me at the truck and broke two shovels in the process. Tomorrow he’s putting his pry bar in the truck! He also has been taking sand out of our pit and it’s getting deep! I had to get a picture of Mark standing in it, all 6′6″ of him look short. He has a big idea of building a root celler in the hole and wants to get it dug out before his boss takes the excavator back for the season. Our backs are sure going to miss that thing. Maybe once I get off probation with my promotion (and they decide to keep me) we can finally get him the Bobcat that he so desires. He’s getting his birthday present for this year next week…a new-to-him truck. One thing at a time, we don’t want to end up in a financial hole like the one Mark is standing in!

We’ve changed the way we are feeding the dogs. Years ago we used to soak the dry dog food with meat for a couple of hours before feeding. After finding out from Joe Cocquyt at Eagle Pack that Eagle wasn’t meant to be soaked we switched to adding it to the thawed meat and water mixture just before feeding. We have now changed to feeding the dry all by itself and a while later giving the dogs their meat/water mixture separately. We had seen in a Martin Buser video that he fed some of his dogs their dry directly on top of their houses, we thought we’d give it a shot. Martin is a four-time Iditarod champion who also happens to hold the current fastest time and figured he might know a thing or two about dog mushing. I took my camera out with me last night at feeding time as I thought the Off The Beaten Path readers would get a kick out of the scene as it happens. We are constantly learning new things in this sport. The dogs seem to love it and as long as they do, we’ll keep it up.

After the snow stopped mid-morning yesterday, the weather seemed to change every five minutes. It would rain, the sun would come out, it would pour, the sun would come out, it would rain, the the wind would pick up. One of those typical northern Minnesota spring days. We’re getting low on firewood so hopefully it will warm up one of these days. In between the rain showers I was able to turn up the ground in front of the cabin what was the vegetable garden last summer. The plan is calling for that to be turned into a flower/perrenial garden and a raised bed vegetable garden will go in on the north side of the cabin. We think we’re going to have to put up an electric fence to keep out the hares, chipmunks and squirrels though. The little chipmunks loved my tomato plants last summer and I’m thinking of getting some upside down planters for them this summer. I thought I would hang them in the trees in the dog yard and that should keep the rodents out! First though we need the weather to warm up so we can get things planted. I have some green peppers and sunflowers started in peat pots in the extra bedroom so hopefully I can get them in the ground before the fourth of July.

Have a great week and keep your fingers crossed for some real spring-like weather.

For more information on Black Magic Kennels, contact us at
info@BlackMagicKennels.com
218-349-7960

Off The Beaten Path Weather Report, 8:30 a.m.: 34 degrees, 78% humdity, overcast with snow, light winds.

Mark and I want to wish our mom’s, Diane Black and Joan Hjelle a very Happy Mother’s Day. We hope you have a great day!

Yes, I said snowy Mother’s Day. I woke up this morning at 5:45, sat up in bed and said “oh my god!” remarking about the snow coming down outside our bedroom window. After making my run to the little house, I decided to crawl back in bed thinking that maybe I was dreaming and if I slept a little longer I would wake up and find it raining. No such luck. Maybe this will be the last time that Old Man Winter rears his ugly head, I’m hoping that he just wanted to wish his mom a happy mother’s day.

After chores and breakfast yesterday morning, Mark and Roxy headed down the hill to the Ege sawmill to meet Mr. Ege and get a piece of steel I-beam to make a drag for our road. (Thanks Duane!) On their way back up the hill, they used the drag to cut down the hump in the middle of the road to smooth it out. The one pass helped some but it has a long way to go. The plan now is after Mark drops me off in the mornings, he will drag the road on his way back home. Hopefully by the time he goes back to work in a couple of weeks, it will be better. Right now we can still only drive the truck on the north route and after he goes back to work, we are hoping that the south side will be passable and we can start doing some major work on that to make it better. 

We also have to do a ton of brushing as in a couple of weeks Mark is going to have a new (to him) truck and we don’t want to scratch the heck out of it. Just as we thought, good friend Mike Bestgen has found us an ideal truck. It’s a fully-loaded 2004, 4WD 1/2 Chevy. According to Mike the previous owner is a regular customer of his and the guy keeps his trucks immaculate. I told Mark he’s going to have to keep it clean (for those of you that know him, that’s not going to be easy) or I’m going to take it from him and he can squeeze into my 4-Runner.

We also want to send out birthday wishes to Voyageur owner, Mike Prom who is just one year away from “middle age”. Have a great day Mike.

Time to go have another cup of coffee and dig out a pair of boots to slog through the snow. We hope all the moms out there have a great Mother’s Day!!!

Off The Beaten Path Weather Report, 7:30 a.m.: 38 degrees, 79% humidity, overcast, calm winds.

To those of you that are die-hard fisherpeople, you might need your ice auger for a few lakes around here. As of yesterday, Chester, Ester, Devilfish and Tom were still socked inwith ice. The only lake that we’ve been by that was open is No Name. We didn’t get our license renewed yet, so we won’t be wetting a line this weekend. This might be one of the last chances to go moose shed hunting so if the rain holds off you will find us in the woods this afternoon.

I was incorrect in what I heard about the Ester Lake Road being closed to boat hauling. I spoke with Ranger Bob yesterday and he said they are restricting pulp hauling from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. beginning May 15th. What that means is that anyone traveling on the Ester Lake Road should be aware of logging trucks on the road during those times. They are also not going to be allowed to haul on the weekends. So the restriction is for the truck drivers not someone towing a boat! Sorry. Ranger Bob did say that they are adding additional pull-outs and clearing brush on the corners for added visibility to make it safer. He stressed that everyone should be careful and to obey the 20 mph speed limit that will be posted.

Time to get some work done inside so I can get outside later. Now that I am working Fridays, I have less home time to get the domestic duties done. Have a great opener everyone!

Well, he did get his butt out moose shed hunting yesterday and found two old ones. They were so old I didn’t even take a picture of them. They are on display on the jack pines lining our driveway, so if you are around this weekend you can see the trophies. When Mark was out moose shed hunting today, he said that Chester, Ester and Devilfish Lakes still have a lot of ice on them. He didn’t go by Tom Lake and we haven’t heard if that is open or not yet either. We’ll keep everyone posted as things open up.

After I got home, we fed the dogs and gave them all new straw. On Wednesday night we cleared the old, wet straw out of them and gave the house a day to completely dry out before giving them a little for bedding. Then we hung out with the dogs for a while and played. I had my camera and was able to get this fun one of Athena getting a little “nosey” with it.

While it still isn’t quite feeling like nearly mid-May, there is more traffic on the backroads. A note to the Off The Beaten Path “wish-they-could-be’s”: as of this morning, there are still two culverts out on the Irish Creek Road and the locals are having to take the Ester Lake Road out to the Arrowhead Trail. I also heard on WTIP on my drive home, that from May 15th to November 15th, there is going to be some major logging on the Ester Lake Road and the DNR is going to be restricting boat-towing traffic to weekends only, if I heard right. Tomorrow I’m planning on calling Ranger Bob Maki (the other “Most Outrageous Pink Outfit” winner at Mush For a Cure), for confirmation. I’ll post this weekend what he says.

Have a great Mother’s Day weekend everyone!

Mark better get his butt into the woods moose shed hunting. Last night we talked to Brian Silence and he and another guy took the day and went “hunting” and and holy crap, found 16 today!!! It sounded like they were pretty far off the road and only brought 11 of the good ones out including a skull with the horns still attached. We figured we best get out there soon because if we get some more rain and warm weather it’s going to green-up fast. Mark also mentioned to Brian that he wants to get out there before the wood ticks come out and unfortunately, it sounds like it’s too late. Brian found two of them on himself when he got home. Yuck.

Mark wasn’t able to go moose shed hunting yesterday because he moved all the dogs around the yard. I tried to take a photo of the Varsity Team playing with their new neighbors tonight, but since my flash doesn’t work, the photo turned out too fuzzy. A new digital camera is on the list of things to purchase this summer (along with a new laptop, new truck, and hopefully a real floor in the cabin.

Something tells me Mark will be in the woods today. A couple of “The Yahoos” are in the area getting ready for fishing opener so they might have a few minutes to start looking themselves before Saturday. If the lakes don’t open up, they might have time to start hunting this weekend and may find “our” sheds. We can’t have that!

Happy Birthday wishes go out to Mark’s dad, Tom. We will try calling later tonight, but we don’t know if you are on your annual Canadian fishing trip. If you are, are you fishing in a boat or drilling holes in the ice?

The 3 1/2 miles home is getting a little better. I use the words “road and little” loosely. A little better means that even the Redneck truck isn’t sinking almost out of site in a couple of spots and most of the snow is finally gone. There are still a couple of heavily shaded spots that are having a hard time letting go. Hopefully by Memorial Day we will be snow-free.

Mark was able to get a little moose shed hunting in yesterday afternoon and found another one. While it’s not the biggest one in the north, it is a moose horn. Of course, he found it in a spot that I told him two years ago I thought was a “good spot” and that year he ended up finding five of them the next day while I was at work. I’m getting anxious to get out for at least a couple of hours before the leaves and wood ticks come out. Hopefully Mother Nature will give us some nice weather this weekend.

If it’s not raining today, Mark will be moving dogs around. Ranger, Johnny and Zena are getting moved to the JV team and Jango, PJ and possibly Brown are moving up. Did you see that Lis? Jango is moving to the Varsity Team! Lis was one of our live-in handlers last winter and she ran Jango quite a bit. Every day after a run one of us would ask her how he did and her reply; “Jango is a Rock Star”.  So Lis, you might want to adopt him now in the BL.A.C.Klub so you can say he is yours when he makes the race team.

We also want to get the Guflint Trail Hiking Trail girls into the main yard to make room in the puppy pen for Tucson if she is pregnant. It’s still too early to tell if The Princess is “with children” but if she is, she should start showing in a couple of weeks. We’ll keep everyone posted. Since she is The Princess, we think that a “royalty” theme is in order so Jim and Anne, start thinking of a names for the puppies.

It’s with a heavy heart I write today. We received news yesterday that Joe Cocquyt, one of the founding brothers of Eagle Pack Pet Foods passed away on Sunday. We have been feeding Eagle since 1992 and in 1993, we took a road trip to Mishawaka, Indiana to tour the Eagle plant. After dinner, Joe’s treat, Joe and his wife, Jodee, graciously invited us to their home for dinner and to watch the Indiana basketball game on their big screen TV. In case you have been asleep for the last half-century basketball is big in Indiana. I don’t remember who they played against, or if they won, but we have felt like family ever since. In 1996 and 2002, the years that Mark ran the Iditarod, Joe personally paid for my round-trip flight from Anchorage to Nome, both times paying over $600! (In 2002, I paid $400 for a round-trip flight from Duluth to Anchorage). While in Nome both years, Joe would take me around and introduce me to everyone he knew in the mushing world, which was alot, and treat me like family. One of my best memories was having lunch at Fat Freddie’s Cafe in Nome with Joe and Charlie Boulding. Charlie is now retired from sled dogs, but if you have ever seen Charlie in an Iditarod news report, you know that he was quite the character. Another favorite memory is dancing with Joe at the Bering Sea Saloon to Hobo Jim’s “I did, I did, I did the Iditarod Trail” and “The Rodeo Song” by Chris LeDoux. Joe would request that song a couple of times a night and since this is a family blog I won’t post his favorite line of that song.

On our first trip to Alaska in 1994, we were Iditarod spectators, traveling with the Eagle Pack entourage. We were able to go to Iditarod champion Martin Buser’s house with the crew and while there a crew was filming a commercial for Timberland boots. They wanted Martin to stand on a dog sled being towed by a snowmobile to film just his boots standing and peddling on the runners. Joe had introduced us to Martin earlier so Martin looked at Mark and said “you’re from Minnesota so you know how to drive a snowmobile”, so if you have a 1994 Iditarod update in your video collection and see the Timberland boot commercial, thanks to Joe, Mark was driving the snowmobile for the commercial. Altough the check must have been lost in the mail!

Also thanks to Joe in 2002 I was able to fly to the Iditarod checkpoint of Nikoli with Joe’s brother Maury. Joe had introduced Mark and I to Maury a couple of days earlier at the pre-race banquet and he new I had never been “on the trail”. While we were only in Nikoli for a couple of hours and I was there about 12 hours ahead of Mark’s arrival, it is another thing I will never forget.

Joe you will be sorely missed by your “family” in northern Minnesota. Joe was one of the first phone calls Mark received congratulating him the year that he won the Beargrease. You were one of our strongest supporters and we will miss the yearly after-race phone calls telling Mark how well he did , even the years he didn’t finish.

Joe is survived by his wife, Jodee, daughter Kirsten, son Kevin and their spouses and children.

Happy Trails Joe.

By all measures the first annual Ham Run Half Marathon was a success. Mother Nature blessed us with beautiful weather, no one was injured and no accidents happened with one lane of traffic closed on the end of the Gunflint Trail. Our hats go off to Sue Prom who again came up with a great idea and to all the coodinators, volunteers and spectators. Congratulations to the runners of both the 5K run and the half marathon. Way to go! We were stationed at the intersection of Sag Lake Trail and the Gunflint Trail which was about a mile from the finish line, so by the time the runners got to us, most were about ready to be done. They all were pretty happy when we told them they only had a mile to go…we even got a couple of them to smile. Notice how most runners never seem to be smiling?

Our favorite runner was this little guy running with his mom in the 5K. You will have to click on the photo to read his number…it says 121-1/2! What a trooper. He even stopped to let me take the picture. Again, congratulations to all the runners, maybe next year Mark and I will have to try it…the 5K that is.

After we got home around 4:30 Mark had to fire up the backhoe and ATV to haul sand to a couple of soft spots in our road. It’s an endless chore, but we need to keep the north side of the road open. It was 25 degrees when we left at 6:00 yesterday morning and Mark thought it would be frozen enough to take the southern route. Well, let’s just say, we made it through, but we did take the north side back home. The south route has some spots that are so bad I worried we weren’t going to make it. The Redneck truck bottomed out twice, but I think we took another one of it’s lives of that it has left by doing so.

Hopefully it spring will come back this week. We’re keeping our fingers crossed!

Daylight Watch: Today will be 2 minutes and 54 seconds longer than yesterday!!!

Since the alarm is going off at 4:30 this morning, I’m writing this on Saturday night. I don’t want to get up any earlier than we already have to.  We have our clothes laid out for the A.M. and it includes long underwear and wool socks, just in case. My camera battery is charged and ready to take photos of the runners and fun. Hopefully it won’t snow. Julie e-mailed this afternoon and said the Gunflint had to be plowed as the Greenwood Lake area got 7″ of snow!

Saturday afternoon turned out to be OK after the snow stopped. The sun came out and if it wasn’t for the strong winds it would have been a beautiful. After doing chores, having breakfast and relaxing a bit, we actually got some work done around here. I did some more organizing in the cabin and Mark built brackets in the rafters of the garage to store dog sleds. Hopefully, we won’t need them for a few months as they are stored out of the way until we have to bring them back down for repairs.

Time to have some dinner, watch a movie and get to bed at a decent hour. Again, if you are looking to have some fun in Cook County, come up the trail and cheer on the runners in the Ham Run Half Marathon.

Daylight Watch: Today will be 2 minutes and 57 seconds longer than yesterday!!!

Off The Beaten Path Weather Report: 27 degrees, 90% humidity, overcast with snow, breezy.

 When I made my last trip to the little house last night around 10:00 it was spring and when I made my first trip this morning, it was winter again. I know we overslept a little, but I didn’t realize we overslept six months!

Today an estimated 500 people are going to be planting 75,000 red and white pine seedlings in the Gunflint Green Up event and tomorrow is the Ham Run Half Marathon and I hope everyone brought their mukluks! If this weather keeps up, I might have to dig out my parka  and rain gear to be standing at the Sag Lake Trail intersection for the race tomorrow. Here is Weather Underground’s forecast for tomorrow:

Mostly cloudy. A slight chance of rain showers in the morning…then a chance of rain showers in the afternoon. Highs 45 to 50. West winds around 5 mph increasing to 10 to 15 mph in the late morning and afternoon. Chance of rain 40 percent.

Mother Nature and Old Man Winter (who refuses to die) can’t keep us Northern Minnesotans down. We’re a hardy bunch and the tree planting and the race will go on. The biggest risk for runners in long races is usually deydration or overheating, I think tomorrow the risk is going to be slipping on ice and hypothermia. It was 52 weeks ago today that we got a phone call from Julie letting us know there was a small wildfire burning near Ham Lake, I don’t think we’re going to get a similar call today.

Daylight Watch: Tomorrow will be 2 minutes and 57 seconds longer than today!!!