It's the lazy days of summer here and not a lot going on. We just had a heat wave, with temps. in the mid to upper 80's and high humidity. Our insect population is booming and it's almost impossible to spend much time outdoors most days without being harassed by either mosquitoes, biting flies, gnats, or a combination of the three, and we are constantly putting bug repellents on the dogs to try to keep them somewhat comfortable. Really makes us look forward to fall and winter- give us cool temps and no bugs over this heat, humidity and bugs anytime!
We've been cooling off at the lake as much as we can, although unfortunately the biting flies are almost always a nuisance on Lake Superior's shoreline this year.
We did take a ride up and spent the day in the Porcupine Mountain State Park the other day, hiked at Presque Isle and then drove South Boundary Rd. and swam at Union Bay, which has the nicest, perfect sand beach at this end of Lake Superior. Then we went up to Lake of the Clouds and enjoyed a packed lunch and walked up to see the Lake. Elliot was not content with just hiking and strolling and had to be his a little bit dare devil self. He likes to jump over most things and climb on everything else!
Like a monkey!
We've had quite a bit of rain, too, so the water is flowing fast for this time of year.
The customary "on top of the rock photo". We always take a pic of the kids on this rock when we are there.
Snake.
Tadpoles.
The photographer gets photographed.
Lake of the Clouds.
The cute kiddos.
A rare family photo (successful use of the timer on the camera)
More pics from this summer:
Rare sighting of a deer in our front yard (rare because of the 23 huskies in the yard)
Had a big bon fire for Elliot's birthday (June 20)
Elliot likes to cook over a campfire.
Went to the fireworks in Wakefield, MI (bout 13 miles from home). We got Elliot some of his own fireworks this year and let him light them while we were waiting for the show. No, it's not snowing-those are mosquitoes that were harassing us. Bug spray is a necessity this year!
Lighting a mortar. Elliot's show was better than Wakefield's!
How Elliot started watching the big show. Yes, he's laying in the middle of the road. He loves to entertain!
Our pond and flowers-I'm pretty happy with the results of our work to put this in.
And of course, some current pic.'s of the "summer dogyard". We are really glad we decided to do this. With all the rain we had this year, we don't know if the winter yard would have ever really dried out good. The grass has overtaken it and it should be ready for the dogs to move back down in the late fall.
Elliot has proven himself to be quite a track star this spring. He's in eighth grade track and has been doing the high jump, 200 meter dash and 400 meter dash and has excelled in all three. He woke up sick today, went to school anyhow because of his meet, and ended up winning high jump with a jump of 5'4" and 400 meter dash with a time of 58 seconds. The 400 wiped him out and he had to scratch the 200 and go see a doctor. He has strep and will get better quickly I'm sure. Last week, he got 2nd in the high jump and won both the 400 and 200.
So we finally have spring in progress here in da U.P.! We have started getting the dogs out on loose runs and have been busy moving the dog yard to a drier spot up behind our house. We were so sick of the mud that comes with spring when they are down next to the drive way. We need to have them down there during the winter so we can easily get them loaded and unloaded for training/racing because we can't plow a route to up behind the house in the winter. So for the moment, we have resigned ourselves to the work of moving the dog yard now for the summer and then we will move them back down by the driveway this fall before the ground freezes. It's a ton of work to move all the dogs, swivel posts, and dog houses, but the dogs are definitely happier and so are we, not having to wear muck boots when we are in the kennel.
We wanted to get them outta this damn mud!
We moved them from down here to way up there behind the row of pine trees...
Up there...
One of the tasks was pulling the swivel posts that the dogs are tethered to. Jeremy has come up with a pretty good system for it-
The post.
Loosening it with a pipe wrench.
Use a small loop of chain.
Use a vice grip as a stop, a heavy pipe as a lever, and a cinder block as a fulcrum.
Push on the lever.
Slides right out!
The new temporary yard. They have small trees around them, so more shade options.
View from the back of the yard. Not very organized (no real rows), so it will take some getting used to, but everyone is happy.
Honestly, it's also kind of nice to have them further from the road/less visible, too.
Yet another snowstorm, now in May! We had a few nice days right before that were in the mid 60's all the way to the mid 70's on April 30th, then on the evening of May 1, it started snowing and of course the forecast was for six to eight inches and none of us wanted to believe we'd see that much snow this late. Turns out it was wishful thinking and we ended up with about 14 inches by the 3rd! Last night, we got rain on top of it all, so there was a nice crust on it this morning. It's a miserable mess really, with water and mud under all the wet, heavy snow.
Sure hope this is really the last time this spring!
We are having a very late spring, getting more and more snow. We had a storm on the 18/19th and then again on the 22/23, each bringing us at least a foot of snow! We still have a lot of snow still on the ground from the winter, too, having very little significant thaw so far, although the temps have been around freezing, so the snow is wet and mushy and our trails are too soft to use safely with the sleds, so we are playing the waiting game for things to thaw enough to be able to loose run the dogs in the woods. Right now, we can't walk on our trails much because there is so much snow yet!
We took the pups and the little dogs out for a walk on some of our training trails last Tuesday. Very mushy and wet.
The road in had not been plowed after the last storm and is really soft and muddy and would be nearly impossible to pull our trailer into without risking getting stuck.
What we woke up to on Friday morning.
We decided to go to Medford, WI to pick up meat for the dogs and then over to Antigo, WI to pick up a couple of new dogs, and discovered that spring is a bit futher along down that way. This picture was taken while the storm was still raging at home! At least we got away from the crappy weather for the day.
What we woke up to today.
A demonstration of snow depth in the field behind our house. This is a broom handle stuck all the way down to the ground.
Elliot marked the depth with his hand, so we determined that there's about 2.5 feet on the ground still.
We got like a foot of snow last night and today. Unfortunately, Jeremy works weekends so we don't have time to go and enjoy it with dog teams until Monday. Hopefully the weather holds out long enough for us to get a good run or two on it before it melts. I would love to get out sledding a couple times to enjoy the snow rather than just have to shovel it!
